


Two Roads: A 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Revamp

by SentinelSaber



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Body Horror, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I don't have after-effects to re-edit the film so you get this instead, I don't like to throw things away so we'll just make the things I don't like extremely unimportant, If JJ can steal from Legends than so can I, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, TROS remix, The Little Guys' Big Day Out, You get a subplot! and you get a subplot! and YOU!, but this is to advance character development not wallow in exploitation jsyk, reuse and recycle, t/w I do delve into the slavery backstories to some degree, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22128712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SentinelSaber/pseuds/SentinelSaber
Summary: The Resistance is on its knees! COMMANDER POE DAMERON struggles to find and train recruits after the decimation of Resistance forces at the Battle of Crait. FINN and ROSE TICO have been dispatched to Rose’s home planet of Hays Minor to disrupt First Order recruitments and turn the population to the side of the Resistance. GENERAL LEIA ORGANA is stretched thin, sponsoring elections in the wake of Starkiller Base’s massacre of the previous government while also leading the Resistance, now the New Republic’s only protection. As the last Jedi Knight, she is also completing the training of REY, last hope of the Jedi. Meanwhile, SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN solidifies the First Order’s grip on the cowering remains of the Republic. Obsessed with destroying Rey and the Resistance, he has spent a year searching every system on the charts. His right hand and bitter enemy, GRAND ADMIRAL ARMITAGE HUX, assists him by directing the daily administration of the First Order, eager to impose order on the galaxy at any cost. But something new is on the horizon: a secret which might spell the end of the war… or the end of the Force itself…
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fix-fic for The Rise of Skywalker, in that it tries to use the specific elements presented in the sequel trilogy films and TROS in particular in such a way as to improve (to my mind) the story, themes, characters, and so forth. This is not intended to bolster one ship or another but provide a sort of pitch script for the alternate universe in which I was called upon to write the film (pssst Disney: CALL ME). Of course I've made changes -- switching planets/titles/etc., removing some scenes or elements I felt unnecessary, adding in things I think would work. Some tags have been omitted for spoiler reasons. This is being posted as each chapter is drafted; I reserve the right to move things around as the story evolves. And I haven't read most of the EU, so don't @ me

Many of Yavin IV’s trees were new growth; the monsoon season had just ended, and every year the torrential rains sluiced new soil down from the mountains to replenish the jungle. Shrubs and saplings sprang up in the islands of light beneath the canopy. The older trees, wider than the planet’s stone ziggarauts, put forward slender shoots from their stripped trunks. Recovery was slow and hesitant; although the Rebellion had attempted to preserve the planet’s jungles – for cover as much as anything else – the jungle was scarred too badly to easily spring back. The re-establishment of the bases by the Resistance only drove the older, more sensitive flora deeper into fearful hibernation. But what little new growth there was flourished regardless; saplings glowed green where the sun’s rays pushed through them, and their leaves held the warmth inside the canopy.

Rey loved the new growth clearing she had claimed. It was warm and wet, the damp of the trees and the duff steaming open her pores so she could drink the moisture in through her pale skin. She felt herself rising like the steam, dissipating through each leaf into the sunlight, streaming out between the trunks and through their bark, looking up through the leaves of the canopy and down over the wide green spread of the jungle. She no longer had to imagine how the jungle might spread based on what Poe had told her about his home planet; instead, she sensed the patterns of life around her and flowed out through them, not deducing but rather seeing how the trees vied for space yet respected each others’ boundaries, how they and their saplings and their dependent orchids and mosses and shrubs would spread their seeds, and how they would decay and become nourishment for the next generations, growing farther and farther away.

Rey wondered if this was the kind of unfocussed warmth Finn had felt in his bacta tank a year ago.

Her connection with the life around her snapped and she plummeted.

‘ _Yaaah!_ ’ Rey slammed into the forest floor, rolling wildly as rocks pelted down around her. She was supposed to have been levitating them within her sense of pattern -- but apparently she’d lost that, too.

‘ _Rey.’_ Her master’s voice was naturally humorous but, as usual, held no indulgence.

Rey sprang to her feet, panting. She didn’t bother to ask how Leia had found her favourite meditation space. It was relatively hidden, but it was still close to one of the network of training courses. And, of course, Leia was also Jedi Master Organa.

‘I’m sorry, master,’ she said quickly.

‘You were distracted,’ Leia observed.

Rey clenched her hand. ‘Yes.’

‘Not by me.’

‘No.’ Rey squeezed her eyes shut in frustration and shame; she didn’t want to look at the Jedi. ‘It’s not _working._ I’m always distracted!’

‘Anyone in particular?’

Rey felt a guilty trickle of cold in her stomach. ‘…It’s different every time. It’s not a _person._ It’s _me._ I can’t do it.’

‘You can. I’ve seen you. You’ve seen yourself.’

‘I can’t do it for _long._ ’

‘You can do it for long enough.’

‘Long enough isn’t _enough!_ ’ Rey said. She reached back and pulled her staff off her back, smacking the end into the dirt, keeping her hands busy so she didn’t have to think. But her distractions boiled up anyway. ‘I’m not like Master Luke! I can barely meditate, how can I stay inside the Force all the time? I shouldn’t use it if I can’t control it!’

‘If you understand that much, then you’re ahead of most people,’ Leia said dryly. Then her mouth clamped shut. Rey wanted to push the point, but, for the thousandth time, she backed down.

‘I’m supposed to be doing this to help the Resistance,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to be a Jedi. You _need_ a Jedi.’

‘The Resistance has a Jedi,’ Leia said, with a modest gesture. ‘You’re not here to be our version of Starkiller Base, Rey. You’re not a weapon. That’s what’s distracting you.’

‘But the training -‘

‘Jedi train their reflexes and lightsaber skills because they teach energy control and pattern sensing. The lightsaber is a Jedi’s weapon, ever since the violence of the Old Republic, but it was used to teach first.’ Leia’s hand rested on the holster of her blaster. ‘There were thousands of Jedi – ambassadors, scholars, teachers, colonists, advisors, aid workers – who carried lightsabers and never used them against another being. Just their own demons.’

Rey had never heard this before. ‘Master Luke never told me about them.’

Leia’s smile was grim. ‘Luke was a great man: wise, experienced. But like a lot of late-era Jedi, his focus was on the now, and the future, and the war. And also like many of us, he was burned by the past. But my father, Bail Organa, was close to the Jedi. He watched as their order was consumed by the Clone Wars; even the peaceful among them were turned into tools of war. Alderaan was a planet of aid and teaching, and the Jedi Consulars and Sentinels were a part of that – until the Emperor destroyed us all.’

‘Consular. Sentinel.’ Rey repeated, memorising but not quite understanding. Leia frowned.

‘I’m not giving you directions, Rey,’ she said, cutting off the train of thought. Rey blinked. ‘I’m reminding you that the Resistance is not only dedicated to destroying the First Order, but to building systems to help beings crushed under it. You’re not a failure to the Resistance if you don’t fight. The only way you can fail is if you don’t find something that matters to you.’

‘The Resistance matters to me!’ Rey objected. The cold trickled back into her stomach.

‘I know it does,’ Leia said. ‘But there’s more that matters to you than fighting. You need to find a way to work for it without letting it destroy you. And,’ she added, in a lighter tone, ‘your training.’

_I should understand,_ Rey thought, frustration flooding back. _But I_ don’t! _I shouldn’t care about anything else while we’re still at war. I can’t do anything else except_ do better. _Otherwise I’ll be letting everyone down. I’ll be letting the Resistance down. I already am._

Her master, sensing her internal turmoil, had looked politely away. Rey, afraid of blurting out more she could get yelled at for, took a new grip on her staff.

‘I’m going to run the course again,’ she said, and turned blindly and ran.

* * *

During the final days of the Rebellion, when Luke Skywalker had been feverish with war, he ended his long days of spying and strategising by pursuing his Jedi training late into the night. He hacked paths through the jungle of Yavin IV, climbed through the unpredictable ruins of the planet’s ziggarauts, and fought through the mud of the swamps. Decades of jungle had not erased these painful efforts, and, through the past year, Rey had re-established them and run them herself, and then those that Leia cut, and then her own. She tried not to have favourites, because that would have defeated the purpose of sensing the connection of all things, but when she was confused or afraid, she always returned to her own. _Not because they’re easier,_ she justified. _Because they’re the only courses with staff work._

Remote droids roamed the criss-crossing network, appearing at odd moments and even swarming if Rey failed to repel a scout immediately. She reached out to sense them as she ran, picking up speed in spite of the the slippery fallen leaves; her staff ends wove to and fro in her hand, cycling through the stances of any block she may need.

She realised her mistake as a remote dropped from the canopy like a rock and her staff was positioned for the wrong block. _No! Don’t prepare – sense it! Every time!_ She threw herself down feet-first under the remote, dragging her staff up for cover. She was sliding straight for a tree – she’d break her ankle if she couldn’t stop her momentum. The remote adjusted its aim and fired again, and she balled up, reached for the Force, and pushed off the tree to spring back at the remote. Her staff whipped around as she turned, then slammed down onto the remote, knocking it back long enough for her to land, roll, then spring her lightsaber alight and disable it. But it was too late – there was a buzz, and another remote shot out of the trees to her right.

_It’s still not enough,_ she thought, whirling to face it but already on the defensive. Luke’s voice was in her head, telling her to push through her instinct and take the opportunity for attack -- but Leia was there, too, telling her defense wasn’t fear but time for planning before deliberate action. _Plan? What’s the point? It’s a remote, it only works in a few ways._ The familiar frustration came up in Rey, and she slashed at the useless droid wasting her time with its tests when she should be elsewhere doing more important things. The Resistance _needed_ her, and this was how they treated her? Shut outside? Burned out on obstacle courses? At the whim of their endless speeches without any results?

The remote, limited as its programming was, nevertheless seemed to dodge her again and again. Her blows came slower, heavier, with deliberation and the power of her entire back instead of the momentum of her shoulders and the turn of her core. She pushed forward like there was a strong wind behind her, straining for balance while she hacked jaggedly. Even the remote seemed to struggle through the air now, but she kept missing it, distracted by a roaring in her ears like a choir. She was unfocussed, disconnected from the struggle, almost blinded. Every sense strained. Her arms gave out and the tip of her saber dipped. She struggled, trapped in the thick currents of an unseen power.

Then the current stopped and, abruptly released, Rey stumbled forward. Her limbs swung free again and instantly she brought her lightsaber up into a defensive position – but there was nothing there. Only darkness. Her ears were still overwhelmed with white noise, but with her lightsaber and control over the rest of herself her courage returned. She shifted to a more comfortable stance and cautiously bled her mind outwards, feeling for the Force.

The current which had grabbed her still whirled in the darkness around her periphery, waiting for some trigger to close back in and remove her.

_Someone is doing this. Someone wants me to see._ The cold trickle in her belly whispered at a possible answer, but a long year of mental training had paid enough dividends for her to push it aside, if not completely away.

She focussed on her senses instead of her thoughts; Leia scolded her for it, but it was hard not to try and use her eyes at the best of times. _And isn’t using all your senses what the Force is all about?_ she reasoned, conveniently forgetting hundreds of hours of blindfolded combat.

Rey blinked.

The darkness, at first absolute, cleared somewhat as her eyes adjusted. It wasn’t a fog or the suffocating blackness of space; it was more familiar than that – the inky black of a moonless night in the remote desert.

It wasn’t Jakku. Rey didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. There were no rolling dunes but instead a dusty desert plain, mud baked hard and studded with pebbles and animal holes. Even the hard-burning stars behind the thin atmosphere did little other than outline the shadow of a sharp rock ridge or a sloppy vertical column of hardened organics. What she took for a distant circle of mountains she eventually realised was an exceptionally-low cloud bank, the twinkling stars near it resolving into lightning flashes. Whatever this plain was, it was barred from the rest of the planet by an impenetrable ring of storms. She looked up, expecting to see the thunderheads rolling closer in; instead, outlined against space, she saw the familiar knife of a First Order flagship.

Rey stumbled back a step, shutting her lightsaber although she knew she’d probably already been seen. A spark grew between her and the distant hull of the destroyer: a dropship, speeding directly towards the plain.

She didn’t wait to see any more, but turned and ran. Her boots slapped against the mud, and she lost her balance once as the mud cracked under her. _Cracked? Am I actually here?_ There was nowhere to go, she was just running for the sake of not seeing him, not having to bear up under his lies or feel his groping in her mind, not having to barricade herself against his lures and the war behind them.

But then she passed one of the organic columns and there was an identical one behind it, and in a flash she realised they were identical, artificial, and that between them was a depression. _Like a sinkhole._ She slid behind the column and stomped, hard, on the depression. It didn’t sink; instead the whole depression fell away, the mud shattering down into the sandstone crack of a natural cave. The dropship above her screamed as it hit the atmosphere and shot towards her; without hesitation, she jumped into the hole.

It was a crack in the rock, the walls smoothed like something had been flowing down it for thousands of years. The pale sandstone partially reflected the harsh starlight streaming in, but Rey plowed down, huddling in the shadows. Her feet scrabbled on the tight pinch of the floor, but her arms had plenty of room, and she hauled herself further in. The crack turned, cutting off most of the light, then turned again, and then gradually it shortened until she was no longer climbing but on her belly, crawling. The staff on her back scraped the roof inches above her head; her lightsaber clattered on the rock as she dragged herself on. She’d squeezed into some tight fits when she was stripping wrecks or rewiring starship engines, but those were in crawlspaces designed for beings to get in and out of; this was nature, and nature ate her own. _Even if this is a vision, I don’t know if I can go back._ Then she remembered the dropship, too far above to hear now but still barring her exit. _I couldn’t go back if I wanted._

The instant this doubt crossed her mind, her groping fingers found empty space, then clutched down. She’d found the lip of a cave.

Rey took a better grip and yanked herself out of the crack and into wide, damp dark. She was so anxious to be free that she didn’t think of what might be on the other side, and hot adrenaline shocked through her at the drop – almost three times her height. She stumbled as she landed, but kept her feet and drew her staff, determined not to be taken off guard again.

_Moron – there’s nobody here! Do something clever for once._ She adjusted her grip on the staff and used it to feel around her. _More sandstone. And grit. It would be mud if there were more of it. There’s water somewhere._ She remembered the mud flats of the plain. _Water must drain down here and collect._

Rey knew water caverns from Jakku; once a month Unkar Plutt sent his train of slaves to harvest from the caves underneath the outland canyons. But she’d always been one of dozens, a mud-splashed grunt in a bucket brigade passing empty containers down the tunnels and ferrying the full ones back up. She knew how the groans and the sweat could multiply in the underground chambers; she’d never thought about how silence could echo, too. Then she realised it wasn’t quite silence, either. The white roar was back.

She knew it couldn’t be an animal, but she was too strained to risk it, and, slinging back her staff, she flicked her saber open. The blue light opened a circle around her, the stone floor pale under her boots but the blackness pressing back against her as if reflecting the light somehow. She waved it experimentally, trying to illuminate the faraway walls. Then, as if she’d ignited some fuse, the light began to spread.

First it was the circle around her feet. It grew, amoeba-like, for a moment, then threaded like water, out through channels in the stone. It wasn’t a pattern Rey recognised but her meditations with Luke came back to her, and she fell into the daze of calm observation, quiet breathing, tracing the connections between her light, the unfolding of this flowing glow, and the ancient traces in the stone. Far away, the tips of the light met one obstruction, and then another, and then another. The glow to her right and left crawled upwards, tracing the high outlines of a cathedral-like cave, and, in front of her, lines flowed around waist-high dark blocks, outlining them before meeting again. Finally, all the streams condensed and fell forward, foaming up into a pool in the centre of the space. The pool was stationary, but shifted uneasily like a feral animal, watching her.

She raised her saber warily and took a step forward. She tried not to step on the light trails -- which turned out to be difficult as they seemed drawn to her, touching her boots as though examining her. The stone blocks marched by her as she passed, each one the size of a reclined being. _Sarcophagi? But there are no lids – no marks -- they’re unbroken stone._ Rey tried not to touch them either.

Her real concern, though, was the noise in her ears. It just got louder, overwhelming her to the point of thickening the atmosphere around her, drawing down the darkness gusting above the glowing surfaces into a pressure that grabbed her head and squeezed. Her attention wavered, and unconsciously she put her free hand up to massage her temple – but then the pressure broke, snapping into a sharp sensation like glass.

Rey sucked in a breath and whipped her saber back up. The pool of light in front of her pulsed again, then began to seethe painfully, like the flickering skin of an animal throwing off insects. Rey’s skin prickled in return, sensing the charge like distant lightning. Then the light of the pool flew apart, up through the streams, back towards Rey, and she stumbled back as each lighted channel shot up into a sheet of blue lightsaber light. She was blinded; they shifted together, as if turning towards her; she levelled her saber, ready to block.

But then each sheet paused and steadied, and then refined itself into a figure. The roaring in her ears calcified into voices, still indistinct but now decidedly sentient, and Rey was looking at unbroken lines of beings in robes identical to Master Skywalker’s. Hundreds of then. A thousand. Each face turned towards her.

‘Jedi,’ she breathed. ‘ _Jedi.’_ She couldn’t think what else to say. Was she intruding on their rest? Did she even belong here? Was this a vision to confirm her fears – that she was no Jedi, that she’d hesitated too long, lost her chance, and everything would come crashing down? Had a thousand generations put her on trial and rejected her?

‘So where do I go now?’ she asked, unable to shake her train of thought. She didn’t mean it to sound so pleading, but it came out bleak. She closed her teeth and pulled herself together. ‘What do you want from me?’

A female Mirialan smiled sadly at her; a black Human laced his fingers in visible frustration. But the voices in her ears didn’t resolve into a single voice answering her. Trying to provoke a response, Rey jabbed her lightsaber at the pool in the centre of the cave.

‘Is this it?’ she demanded. ‘Is this why you brought me here?’

The Force ghosts mirrored her, pointing towards the pool as well in perfect unison. Against the glow, Rey now saw a stream of something dark flowing down into the pool. She moved closer; the Jedi followed.

Rey had always envisioned the Dark Side as having some kind of visible corruption, like dark energy pooling around them or sitting evilly in the lines of their face. Something to prove what they were. _Kylo Ren had none of that,_ she thought bitterly. _Not without the mask. And the sea cave on Ahch-To was nothing but shadows. You can’t see darkness. Which should have been the obvious conclusion, really._

This shadow wasn’t an evil energy dripping like poison into the pure blue glow of the Force ghosts’ pool; it was mud. The same mud she’d broken through to crawl down here. Rey looked up at the black roof of the cave; the slowly crawling tips of the light streams were just meeting in the middle of it. No – they weren’t moving. There was something stopping them. _There’s a hole – and it’s getting bigger!_

Rey realised she could hear the scream of the dropship’s engines again. It was directly above her.

She spun back to the Force ghosts around her.

‘Where are we?’ she asked. ‘How do I find you?’

They were flickering, the light fading. She slashed her lightsaber desperately at the ground, trying to reignite them, but she only cut new glowing grooves into the stone alongside the old channels -- what she now realised were ancient lightsaber marks. The Force ghosts continued to mimic her, waving their arms downwards at their dying glow in the old battle scars.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘Don’t leave me! I don’t know what to do!’

Then the light was gone, and the darkness rushed back in, sucking the breath out of her and whirling her away.

She woke up beneath the gently-glowing canopy of Yavin IV. The trees whispered in her ears.


	2. Chapter 2

The black-rimmed T-70 X-wing slid neatly under the lip of the fighter bay and glided to the commander’s dock at the far end. Commander Poe Dameron popped the canopy and, running his eye over his instruments for the last time, stood to watch the squadron come in behind him. The fighters came cautiously, one at a time, the rest only just visible in a confused gaggle outside. The first couple managed it; the third, not so much. The fourth misjudged how far inside the hanger his dock was and, unable to turn, reversed hurriedly and almost jammed his aft into the nose of the fifth. The sixth, his dock fully visible through the open hanger door, settled smugly into position without a hitch.

Poe heaved a dramatic sigh for the benefit of his ground crew. They grinned at the Commander’s usual humour and jogged off to remove BB-8 from the aft droid slot. Poe climbed down from his X-wing and watched his trainees trickle slowly towards him, slapping his gloves against his helmet. He was disgusted. And maybe a little afraid.

‘They’re not ready, BB-8,’ he said to the astrodroid as it rolled up. BB-8 twittered lightly. ‘For a droid who’s been shot down as many times as you have, you’re a little too optimistic about this.’

‘Commander!’ the highest-ranking trainee shouted, and they all saluted him. Poe pursed his lips.

‘You’ve had dozens of hours of solo time,’ he said. _I already sound exasperated. Damn. I was going to work up to that._ ‘And you still don’t know how to land. I’m not even sure how you stay in the air. I’d bust you all back down to simulators if we had any – and if you weren’t the last pilots in the Resistance.’

The trainees were shocked silent. BB-8 jumped back. But Poe refused to back down.

‘I don’t have the luxury of keeping rookies in the rear guard like I would if we were a full navy,’ he told them. ‘When you’re out front you can’t rely on cover fire and bombers to take out the bulk and let you hunt down the strays. You’re going to be swarmed, I’m talking one-on-one dogfights in close quarters with both enemy and friendly fire. You’ve gotta get comfortable with each other, you’ve gotta cover each other, you’ve gotta figure out each others’ flying styles. If you can’t even land then you don’t have enough of a sense of space to survive _each other_ up there, let alone TIE fighters!’

‘ _Commander!’_ Snap Wexley said, stunned. Poe whirled on the approaching captain in frustration.

‘Don’t argue with me, Snap,’ he said, warningly.

‘You may be our Commander but that doesn’t mean I gotta listen to you tear down the morale of the only pilots we’ve got,’ Wexley hissed under his breath. ‘Not everyone is a born pilot.’

‘They’re gonna _die_ without being real pilots,’ Poe said. ‘Convenient.’

‘Yeah, well, this is what we need ‘em to do, okay?’ Snap said. ‘They’re not born pilots, they’re not born mechanics, they’re not born _anything._ But they signed up and they’re willing to do the work, and that’s worth a hell of a lot more than coasting through on talent and lineage alone.’

Poe was stung. ‘ _My mother –‘_

‘And my mother, too,’ Snap retorted. ‘So don’t get a swelled head, Dameron. Let ‘em sort their deaths out themselves.’

Commander Dameron was silent. The trainees’ eyes bored into his back, their ears straining to hear the whispering.

Wexley sighed. ‘I’ll take ‘em out again.’ His arm clenched around the helmet he held, regretting giving ground. ‘Run ‘em through their landing cycles, formations. You go talk to the General and I’ll stick around here and clean up the mess you made.’

Poe felt the anger drain out of him. He didn’t mind being a disruption socially – _it’s basically my hobby --_ but professionally? The last thing he wanted was to screw things up and get some kid killed. But at this point, standing here in the hanger with Snap glaring at him and his rookie squadron almost in tears – he was totally out of ideas. _And everyone knows I’m the best pilot in the Resistance._

_Maybe the General will know what to do._

‘Thanks, Snap,’ he said quietly.

Wexley lifted his fist to give Poe his customary cuff, but changed his mind and brushed past.

_Stubborn,_ Poe thought without bitterness. But he refused to look back either, instead crossing to the interior exit. _Not because I’m wrong, of course. Just can’t show a disruption in the upper ranks. We’ve got to stick together now._

* * *

General Leia Organa was always on the move; the briefing room, operations, her office with its personal holo, with Rey, with her attaché Lieutenant Connix. Poe eventually located her in the canteen, conferring with a travel-weary General Ematt over koyo stew and caf.

‘Generals.’ Poe nodded.

‘Commander,’ Leia said dryly, noticing his flinch. ‘How are our recruits coming?’

Poe considered lying. Leia caught that, too.

‘ _Poe._ ’

‘They’re… struggling,’ Poe said, trying to steer a middle way.

‘Struggling how?’

‘Struggling to land.’ Poe paused. ‘Struggling with everything, actually. They’re not ready -- and frankly I’m wondering if they’ll ever be.’

‘They’ll have some guerilla strikes to cut their teeth,’ Leia said calmly, making a note on her datapad.

‘Strikes-and-jumps don’t train people how to dogfight,’ Poe blurted, exasperated. ‘If we get cut off during a run or drawn into a large-scale battle, there’s a good chance they’ll all-‘

‘Or,’ Leia cut him off. ‘They’ll be fine. You train them as best you can, Commander. It’s my job to make sure they’re deployed correctly.’

‘They’d be able to ease into it if we had more vets to fill out the ranks,’ Poe said after a sulky moment.

‘We’re working on it,’ Ematt said, sliding in. ‘Part of ensuring these elections take place is to find forces who will ally with us. Not all of them are able to do it openly.’

‘Yeah, I remember,’ Poe said. ‘I remember how no one came for us at Crait.’ Then he saw Leia’s face strain and he shut up. ‘…Sorry, General.’

‘It’s too bad you feel that way,’ Leia said. ‘Because I’m sending you to scout the Warlentta system ahead of the elections there.’

Poe felt the familiar surge of adrenaline at new marching orders. But this time it was mixed with anger and fear. ‘But the recruits –‘

‘I know this is troubling you, Commander,’ the General said calmly. ‘But in fact you are not the only pilot in the Resistance. And you’ll burn out if you keep acting like you are. So: you’re going scouting. We’ll need you to slip away undetected if you discover any spies in the system, so one wingman only.’

‘I could take Finn as my gunner,’ Poe said. ‘We work great together.’

‘Finn is still away on leave,’ Leia said.

Poe hesitated. ‘Pava.’

‘She’s cool in a fight,’ Ematt nodded. ‘And she’s a good scout. I’ll detach her from base recon.’

‘Is there anything specific we should be looking for?’

Leia hesitated, finger drawing across her datapad. ‘Weaknesses. Good forward positions. Lightspeed entry points. I’m sending you the coordinates we’re using to house the candidates; run the travel routes down and back to survey the risks. I don’t like leaving security plans this late, but it was imperative we keep the location of the elections secret until the last minute.’

Poe glanced at Ematt, his recruiter and a man who’d scouted locations for the Rebellion even before Yavin. ‘Is there anything I should know?’

‘No,’ he said flatly.

‘Oh.’ Poe put his hands up. ‘Okay then.’

‘Keep us updated,’ the General said. ‘We have agents in the region on similar errands, but I’d hate to disrupt their missions to save yours.’

‘Hey,’ Poe said. ‘If I break anything, I’ll clean it up myself.’

‘Well, it won’t be Pava’s job,’ Leia said curtly, and turned back to Ematt. It was a clear dismissal and Poe, miffed at her unaccustomed brusqueness, turned on his heel and left.

_I gotta get out of here. Where’s Pava?_ He guessed she might be in the hanger – and he was almost right. Exiting into the huge area from the pilots’ locker room, he bumped into her, brushing jungle damp from her dark hair and snubby bronze face.

‘Commander!’ Jessika Pava said, grinning. ‘I hear you gave the newbies a chewing out they won’t forget.’

_Snap downplayed that one,_ Poe thought with another stab of anger. ‘Yeah, well, if they don’t want to get yelled at, they should start flying those fighters instead of worrying they’re falling out of the air.’

‘Too harsh,’ Pava said thoughtfully. ‘I’d characterise their flight style more as Coruscanti stepping onto an ice planet for the first time.’

Poe bit back an even nastier remark. ‘I’ve been handed down a scouting mission from Genneral Organa. So guess who’s my new wingmate?’

‘Just you and me?’

‘Just me and you.’

‘Good.’ She grinned and slapped her flight gauntlets together to punctuate. ‘I wouldn’t want any of those rookies around to cramp my style.’

‘Your _style?’_ Poe scoffed, relaxing into the usual locker-room banter.

‘Yeah, my _style,_ ’ she said, stripping off her life support vest and hanging it on the service rack. ‘Traditional. Elegant. Clean lines. None of this flashy swooping around like a mynock in a black hole.’

‘A flashy mynock.’ Poe laughed at her as she hopped, trying to remove her emergency harness. ‘If the First Order fighters don’t get you, your mixed metaphors will.’

‘At least _someone’ll_ get me,’ she muttered.

Poe opened his mouth to reply but his eye was caught by Rey, stalking across the hanger floor from the huge exterior doors, covered with mud and white as a sheet.

‘Rey?’ Poe’s bad mood melted at her expression.

‘Oh. Hello.’ Rey somehow seemed startled to see anyone else. She hesitated, then edged towards the inner door to the showers. ‘I’m just –‘

‘You look like runyip snot,’ Pava said.

‘ _Jess,_ ’ Poe snapped. ‘Rey, you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Pava agreed solicitously, then shut up again as Poe visibly clenched his teeth.

‘I’m fine,’ Rey said, flashing her teeth. She fumbled with the door’s keypad. ‘I just need to – clean up a bit.’

‘Okay,’ Poe said, letting his arms drop gently to his sides. ‘Uh. Nothing wrong, right?’

‘Oh! No. No no. It – it’s a Jedi thing.’

A red light went off in Poe’s brain and he looked at her, hard. ‘Not a Kylo Ren thing?’

Rey flushed. ‘ _No._ Now, unless you never want to step foot on the _Falcon_ again, leave me alone!’ She finally managed to punch in her keycode and stormed into the bathing area.

Pava frowned. ‘Well, she’s no Luke Skywalker.’

‘ _Shut up, Jess,_ ’ Poe said. She raised her eyebrows at him, confused, and he relented. ‘It’s mission time. We’re going to the Warlentta system. Check your starmaps. I’ll meet you in the suit-up room in –‘ He checked his holochron. ‘Nine hours.’

‘Just flying, right, Commander?’

‘That’s the plan. But bring a blaster, anyway, you know these First Order types like to throw a party.’

‘Yippee,’ Jess muttered, then bundled up her belt pouches and left through the briefing room. The door slid shut behind her, and Poe turned back to find Rey, standing staring at him from the doorway to the lockers.

‘Uh?’ he said, surprised. ‘Back with more bad news?’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked. She sounded worried.

‘Scouting mission for Leia.’

‘Is it a desert system? With huge thunderstorms?’

‘Not really.’

Rey hunched her shoulders, frowning.

‘What’s going on?’ Poe demanded, his temperature rising. ‘C’mon, Rey, you can’t drop stuff like that on me and then shut me out!’

‘I don’t _know_ what it is,’ Rey hissed, but retreated slightly. ‘I need to talk to Leia.’

‘Then why are you standing here jerking me around?’ Poe demanded.

‘I’m not!’ Rey flashed. ‘I just wanted to know if you’d be _okay!_ ’

‘Oh! _Okay._ ’ He scrubbed at his hair with his palm, embarrassed but unwilling to give entirely. ‘Sorry. It’s been a bad day.’

‘Mm.’ Rey stared at the floor.

‘Finn’s on an ice planet,’ Poe offered after a moment.

‘Thanks, Poe,’ Rey said lowly.

‘So you know things now?’ he asked. ‘This knowing thing is… a Jedi thing?’

Rey slammed her hand on the doorjamb. ‘Yes. Or it _could_ be a- a Kylo Ren thing.’

A deep dark stab split his head. ‘Oh. That thing.’

‘Yes. That thing.’

They stared at each other without seeing.

‘I don’t remember much of it,’ Poe admitted after a moment. He tried to laugh. ‘Oh purpose, probably.’

Rey’s face twisted. ‘I– it’s not just that. He sends me pictures, too.’

‘ _Pictures?_ ’

‘Visons. I can see where he is, if he lets me.’

Fear poured cold through Poe. ‘Can he see you?’

Rey shrugged. ‘Yes, but – he doesn’t _know_ where I am. He just _sees_ it.’

‘Does Leia know about this?’

‘She knows.’ Rey twisted her hands, scrubbing the dry mud from them. ‘I think she wishes he’d send them to her instead of me. Because I’m not ready.’

Poe felt sick and sat down on one of the suit-up benches. ‘So when Leia said he was looking for you, she meant… _looking._ ’

‘Don’t you think I’d stop it if I could?’ Rey snapped.

‘How come he hasn’t found you yet? Kriff, this makes you the galaxy’s biggest target!’

‘Leia says there’s a Force disturbance or a nexus or something above Yavin IV where the Death Star exploded,’ Rey explained. She sat down next to him, shoulders hunched. ‘It distracts him. He can’t see I am unless he knows to look here specifically.’

‘But something’s changed,’ Poe guessed.

‘I saw something,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not sure what, exactly, but I think it means… I have to go.’

‘Look, I know you feel like you’re rattling around like dice in a cup here, but if you’re hidden –‘ Poe shrugged. ‘Maybe you gotta take one for the team.’

‘No,’ Rey said slowly. She stood up, then looked down at him. ‘I have to do this. Besides, if I leave, he’ll see me and come right for me. If I can just stay ahead of him, maybe I can draw him away from the rest of you.’

‘And what happens when he finds you?’

Rey was pale. ‘I don’t know. I’m hoping… I can find an answer before he finds me.’

‘Did your vision show you something that can stop him?’

‘I think it showed me something he already _has._ But I won’t know what it is until I find it.’ Her voice ran down; Poe sensed she was just as frustrated with the lack of information as he was. ‘Where’s Leia?’

‘Canteen last I saw. But you know the General, she could be anywhere by now.’

‘Thanks, Poe.’ Rey smiled tightly at him, preoccupied but sympathetic. Then she turned and strode away.

‘Well, at least she’s not stumbling around anymore,’ Poe told BB-8. The droid chirruped comfortably in response.

* * *

Rey stepped cautiously through the double sliders to Command. Most of the long, short-ceilinged room was still full of tech that was old when it belonged to the Rebel Alliance. The Resistance, equally strapped for resources, had only managed to update the transparent green holomaps and scanners. Rey’s boots crunched unusually on the rubber-coated floor over the ancient ziggaraut’s stone interior. She realised with a lurch of guilt that she was shedding dried mud. A golden humanoid droid noticed as well and, flapping his arms in distress, trotted over.

‘Oh, Mistress Rey!’ it said, bending up and down to look her over. ‘You’re all over mud! Might I suggest that you –‘

‘Hello, Threepio,’ Rey said, cutting the droid off before he fell into one of his propriety spirals. ‘Is Master Leia here?’

‘Oh.’ The droid straightened, distressed. ‘I am afraid the Princess Organa has departed for the foreseeable future.’

‘What?’ Rey couldn’t believe she had been abandoned without warning. ‘I thought she was staying here until the elections!’

Threepio, his espionage protocols kicking in, twisted to ensure they were not overheard. ‘With the risk of an attack on Warlentta, the Princess has decided to accept the offer of protection extended by Governor Calrissian of Bespin. She is on her way to inspect and deploy his fleet – such as it is.’ The droid inclined his head, a little scornfully. ‘She is expected to proceed directly to Warlentta with the Governor in escort, as he is also due to appear as a Senatorial candidate. However, should you desire to meet with her, you are more than welcome to accompany me when I am schedulled to depart for Warlentta -‘

Rey felt a push in her bones; _I don’t think I have that much time._

‘Thank you, but I can’t,’ she said. She frowned. _Who else would know the history of the Jedi?_ The cold squeeze in her stomach mocked her with its reply. _If only Master Luke was-_

Then she remembered.

‘I’ll be right back, Threepio!’ she shouted, and ran out.

‘Did I miss something, Artoo?’ the golden droid asked a squat blue-and-white astromech. It whistled irritatedly at him, busily engaged in downloading the next wave of flight missions into its databases. ‘How dare you! Perhaps you forget that I have been elevated to Intelligence and you’re still pushing pilots!’ Threepio turned his back. ‘I could tell you where you’re due to be sent next, but now I don’t feel like it. But I can promise you – you won’t like it!’

Artoo jeered, retracting his plug with a snippy _clack._

‘You may have seen a hundred worlds,’ Threepio said. ‘But this one takes the cake. Why, I’d be surprised if you came back in one piece! It’s a shame, I’ll miss having you around to clean gum from under cockpit seats or whatever it is that you do with your time.’

Artoo half-twirled, cooing. Threepio unbent.

‘Well – I suppose we would _all_ miss you.’ Then he stiffened again. ‘Of course, I’m rounding up.’

Artoo twittered.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Threepio muttered. Then he jumped. ‘Oh! Mistress Rey! I didn’t mean-‘

‘It’s all right, Threepio!’ Rey jogged up, grinning excitedly. She had two mildewed bundles under her arm.

‘Are those-‘ Threepio looked around quickly. ‘Mistress Rey! I believe that we should adjourn to the Princess’ quarters.’

Rey followed the droid as he shuffled quickly across the centre to a recessed side door and allowed himself to be scanned. The door hesitated, then slid open and Threepio hurried Rey inside before following. Before the door had a chance to close, Artoo slipped in as well.

‘Oh, very well!’ Threepio said, noticing. ‘But of course _you_ won’t be able to help.’ He stopped. ‘What is it you require _precisely,_ Mistress Rey?’

Rey laid out her parchments across the simple plastisteel desk sitting along the stone wall nearest the door; a desk of a similar style, but larger and with a datapad and holoprojecter set into it, sat at the far end of the small room. The ambient light was indirect and softened by the insulating cloths on the floor and stone walls, but brightened automatically as Rey bent over the desk.

‘These are the last surviving documents of the Jedi,’ she said quietly. Threepio twitched in astonishment.

‘But I thought Master Luke had–‘ The etiquette droid stopped, too late for tact. Artoo gave a sad creak.

‘I’ve had them all this time,’ Rey said. ‘But – I can’t read them.’ She reddened. ‘I can understand the diagrams, and the last few pages, but –‘

‘Ah!’ Threepio said, his temper bouncing back. ‘You require my linguistic assistance!’

‘It’s thousands of years old,’ Rey said uneasily. ‘I don’t know if-‘

‘Languages do alter,’ Threepio assured her. ‘But the rules of lingustic change are widely applicable! Never fear, Mistress Rey, I am fully capable of translating them.’

‘I’m looking for one place in particular,’ she explained. ‘I think it must have been a Jedi temple, or somewhere else used for training.’ She blinked, trying to recall exactly. ‘It was in a cave underneath a desert. There were burial markers everywhere.’

‘Very well, then.’ Threepio inclined his head over the books. One, the spine held together with a net of leather thongs, he flicked through and discarded within a few minutes. The other, a stack of rotting parchment loose within a stiff cloth-bound cover, he went through carefully, back to front, going more slowly all the time.

Rey wandered around Leia’s office as the droid worked. The attaché desk, where Threepio was reading, was clean; _Lieutenant Connix just uses her data-pad, I guess,_ Rey thought. _No wonder I never see her without it._ Leia’s desk, on the other hand, was tidy but showed marks of hasty use. The durable plastisteel was nicked around the edges and especially worn on the user’s side, evidence that Leia’s unending comings and goings made her a little careless in letting her ever-present holster rub up against her surroundings. The datapad was scratched, and the holo-projector, while new, was already discoloured where something – _probaby blaster cleaner –_ had been spilled on it. The chair was padded but stiff-backed; Leia didn’t relax unless she was in her bunk, and even then Rey knew she could reappear at a moment’s notice.

_She hasn’t slept well in forty years,_ she realised with a plummeting feeling in her gut. _Even when she had Han and… her son. She must have been hurting_ all the time, _and nothing could cure it._ A prickling of fear swelled up inside her, and she swallowed it down. _If Master Leia can’t be fix things, how can I? Or am I one of her problems, like… her family?_

‘Mistress Rey!’ Threepio said. She practically leapt over the desk.

‘Did you find something?’

‘Of course I did,’ Threepio said, smug but slightly insulted. ‘I apologise for the wait, but I had to reconstruct the dialectical shifts by working backwards. The cultural contexts, on the other hand, are long lost, and I-‘

‘But you did find something,’ Rey reminded him.

‘Oh. Yes. Well-‘ The droid’s rigid hand flipped the pages gingerly to a point near the beginning. ‘As you can see, this section is in small pieces, and in vastly differing hands. It seems to be a chronicle of that period of the Jedi Order – a period filled with turmoil, I might add. Many temples were destroyed, but several were built to replace them.’

‘That’s perfect! Did you find the one I saw?’

‘Not exactly.’

Her face creased in frustration. ‘Then what-‘

‘The chronicle breaks off suddenly about a thousand years ago.’ Threepio indicated a break in the text. ‘On the next page there is a treatise on the teaching methods of the Jedi. But these last entries –‘ He rested his hand on the page. ‘They _look_ like part of the chronicle. But… they seem to describe something other than history.’

The droid seemed uncomfortable but Rey pressed him; this was important. ‘What is it?’

Threepio twisted to face her. ‘A description of a Jedi temple. Not the one you saw, I’m afraid,’ he added hastily. ‘But the temple it describes is… Master Luke’s.’

Artoo crooned sadly.

Rey stared at Threepio, then down at the manuscript, as though knowing its contents would suddenly render the text itself clear to her. It remained a faded scrawl on muddy animal skin, but now it seemed to burn into her eyes. ‘The one Ky- The one that was destroyed?’

Threepio nodded.

‘But… how is that possible?’

Threepio hesitated. ‘In the past, the Jedi Order was known to traffic in… prophecies.’

Her mind flashed back to her first Force vision deep in Maz Kanata’s castle, how the pictures of her future Jedi Master Luke’s past merged with pictures of things to come. She remembered the feeling of simultaneously falling and sliding sideways, like time wasn’t linear but instead events were spread out next to each other like a deck of sabacc cards, shuffled, rapidly split and pushed together over and over again in different patterns.

_It’s another pattern,_ she realised. _Just like meditation. Sorting out the relevant bits of time and laying them out together instead of looking at all of time in a string. I just don’t have all the bits yet to see the pattern._

Rey looked up. ‘Artoo. Where was Master Luke’s temple?’

Artoo cheeped warily. Threepio banged the astromech’s dome.

‘Master Luke was Mistress Rey’s Jedi instructor, Artoo! If anyone deserves to know the location of that temple, than she does!’

Puzzled, Rey squatted in front of Artoo. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

Artoo swivelled his dome to Leia’s desk. Threepio noticed and swept a golden arm at it scornfully.

‘That’s right! If you don’t tell her, the Princess will!’

Artoo chirruped disbelievingly, but turned back to Rey and, after a moment, beeped. She smiled and patted his housing.

‘Thanks, Artoo.’ She stood. ‘It would mean a lot if you came with me.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mistress Rey,’ Threepio said. ‘But the Princess will require my assistance with the coming elections.’

Rey grinned. ‘Thanks anyway, Threepio. How about you, Artoo?’

The astromech whistled.

‘Okay.’ Rey scooped up the ancient texts. ‘Let’s go.’


	3. Chapter 3

The wind whipped over the frozen landscape, clapping their coats against their legs. Eventually Finn put his hand on Rose’s shoulder, but she still didn’t move, staring down at the cairn of painted stones huddled against the ground. Her dark eyes were hot and swollen in her pale, square face, and her cheerful curls straightened in the wind. The Ticos had built the memorial to their daughter Paige at the base of the mountain the town of Sebris Beta sat on. The sheer cliff and the homesteads crowning it rose above them, and the oily black stain from the mines licked the sky behind, but from where Rose and Finn stood, their backs to the town and looking out, the planet of Hays Minor seemed wild and untouched. The snow, trodden into a thin, dirty ice over the rocky beach, swept unbroken away to the pale, frozen sea under a lavender horizon, and even through their breathing masks the thin air had the tang of broken quartz.

_I saw a lot of mining colonies like this in the Order,_ Finn thought. _The people here are just logs for the fire._ _I wouldn’t want to grow up here, but if you manage to I guess it’s sort of an achievement._ He looked away from the view. _But maybe it’s different if you have your people with you._

‘Thanks, Finn,’ Rose said quietly. She didn’t move.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said. He hesitated, then released her shoulder, and she pivoted sharply, stumping for the path back up to town without looking at him. ‘Don’t you want to go back for lunch? Your grandmother said she’d -’

‘Lunch is when the First Order recruiters are at lunch,’ she said firmly. ‘Lunch is when we can talk to everyone who _isn’t_ First Order.’

‘Yeah, but… it’s _lunch._ ’

Rose snorted and kept climbing.

The path up the pale limestone cliff was narrow and pale like the dirty snow, only slightly darker where the sand had been churned up into it by feet. The snow was thinner here than on the abandoned beach below, and hard brown rosettes edged in white sprouted from the rock, crumbling slowly as the wind hit them and spiralled off white dust like snow flurries. Some of them were older and clearer, the same mineral without the stain of dirt, and these were tiny crystal spikes instead of rosettes: the jypso the planet’s economy survived on.

Finn couldn’t resist snapping off one of the crystals. _I never got to take anything before._ He rubbed it; the cloudiness come off on his fingers. _I can touch things now. And eat things, and walk on the beach – even if it’s a crappy frozen one. I can really be here and not be holed up with a bunch of other stormtroopers in the alternate reality the Order made us carry around in our heads. There’s so much galaxy out here!_ His eyes dropped to Paige’s colourful monument far below. _There are so many people._

He shoved the crystal into his pocket and scrambled to catch up with Rose. The path only got narrower as they got closer to Sebris Beta; they practically had to climb over the final ledge. Rose popped over easily and slid to the end of the alley they’d landed in, peering out at the street. Finn decided to lie panting on the ground for a few minutes.

‘I know we couldn’t have taken the main road down,’ he said. ‘But couldn’t we have taken the main road down?’

‘Are you speaking from the same sense of immortality that tells you it’s okay to be facedown in jypso dirt?’ Rose said. Finn shot upright. ‘Come on, it’s all clear.’

Hays Minor buildings were squat and heavily stuccoed, with double-layered walls filled with filtration insulation to keep the jypso dust out. They all lay on the single main street, which curved up and around the peak of the hilltop. The road was the same pale brown of the cliff path, slushed with dirty snow and skids where skimmers and clumsier pedestrians had passed. But the purple sky glowed with the pale dust, and there were warm splashes thrown up against it where the cheap yellow lamps framed each building’s address. _You could get used to it,_ Finn thought.

As Rose had predicted, the streets were relatively clear during the eating hour, despite it also being the lightest, warmest hour of the day. Most of the people they passed were unrecognisable behind breathing masks and the bulk of insulated coats or mining gear, their only identifying marks a flash of jewelry. Rose, however, had tucked her necklace away, and Finn had regretfully covered up his beloved leather jacket. _Hopefully we’ll be anonymous enough. Didn’t think I’d ever want that again._

‘The mine’s on the other side of town,’ Rose muttered, turning away towards him as a miner clanked out of a house. ‘Most of the processors’ smoke is behind the peak, but some of it leaks over when the winds change, so keep your mask on.’

‘Is everything here toxic?’ Finn asked.

‘I grew up here, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,’ Rose said. Her eyes squinted in a faint smile. ‘Haysers usually eat from street vendors when we’re out for meals –‘

‘Yeah, officers won’t do that,’ Finn said. ‘Anyone raised in the fleet is an indoor kinda guy. Is there a bar?’

‘There are _lots_.’

‘The fanciest one.’

‘There’s a visitor’s mansion near the mines that the governors use when they visit. It’s got a bar in the bottom of it since the local council has offices nearby.’

Finn gestured grandly. ‘Ta-da!’

Rose smacked his upraised arm. ‘Save your ta-das, Finn, we’re supposed to be _avoiding_ First Order officers.’

‘Oh.’

‘So we’re going to the market.’ She softened. ‘There may even be lunch there.’

Finn brightened.

They followed Sebris Beta’s main street as it spiralled up the mountain; the frozen beach beneath them dropped away and the town felt more and more empty. This impression changed when they came around the last turn into a wide space in the road, rimmed with identical doorways.

Rose stepped into the nearest one, and Finn followed. His door clapped shut and panic blurted up as as the floor dropped away, and he fell his full height into another chamber. A nozzle at his elbow choked alive, and then one behind his neck, and them one full in his face, and then the whole chamber was full of eye-burning yellow decontamination steam. It sliced into his pores like needles, and he straightened with a yelp. He was considering kicking one or more of the nozzles when they suddenly switched off and the door slid open, and he stumbled out into a wide, low hall carved directly into the mountain’s limestone. It was filled with smoking carts and busy stalls jammed into a network of aisles beneath a tidy canopy of heat lamps. Bundled forms, their breathing masks hanging loose, bumped each other cozily as they chewed at tables or browsing shops. More than a few in mining gear also had bags across their backs or on their sides, doing some personal shopping before hauling it back to work and finally, at the end of the day, back home. Everyone was steaming slightly yellow with heat and decontamination residue. It all smelled of sweat and musky fur and chalk and… _fry oil. Yes!_

‘It gets too cold to do errands after the sun drops,’ Rose said at his elbow. ‘So everyone comes here at midday.’

‘No wonder the Order recruits so many Haysers,’ he said. ‘Even stormtroopers get a night life.’

Rose just looked at him. Finn shrugged back. ‘Sorry. But we gotta accept that there are reasons people do it.’

‘But they aren’t good ones! We’ve got to show them that.’

‘Yeah, good doesn’t really have anything to do with it.’ Finn paused. ‘So, what, we look for the bored ones and tell them life isn’t so bad here?’

‘Or that it would be better with the Resistance.’ Rose led the way through the packed market, pretending to browse while scanning the crowd. ‘Paige and I wanted to join for years before we finally worked up enough courage to get offworld. I always wished that someone had held out their hand and said, ‘Come with me. I can help you do it.’’

‘I love a heroic rescue,’ Finn said, sniffing hungrily. ‘Rose, we just passed another fry-cart, are you going to string me along until the very last one or are you waiting for me to break down and whine? I’ll do it, I’m not proud.’

‘Oh, kriff!’ Rose suddenly stiff-armed Finn, knocking him off-balance into the nearest food stall.

‘What?’ Finn craned; a skinny figure in a First Order uniform was sliding purposefully through the throng. ‘Oh, _no._ ’

‘Quick! Look busy! Pretend to be talking to someone!’

‘Uh.’ Finn looked at the impassive frycook Rose was blindly shoving him at. ‘Can I get two rote-dogs and a side of chunks?’

Rose was still pushing him anxiously, but he stood his ground and merely rotated in place under her pressure. The frycook observed this jostling without surprise, waiting patiently until Finn turned back around to face him before shoving the food into his hands.

‘He’s coming this way!’ Rose hissed.

‘Calm down, you’re making us look suspicious!’

‘I am calm! But you’re _too_ calm!’

‘You want the regular chunks or the ones with the extra carcel?’ the frycook asked. Finn snorted.

‘Extra carcel, man, I’ve got a life to live.’

‘Not much longer,’ the frycook remarked, throwing the chunks bag onto the counter. ‘That’s Cadet Rojag comin’ over. He’d sell out the governor if it meant enough credits for another year at the First Order Academy.’

‘That’s why we’re leaving!’ Rose half-shouted, pushing Finn.

‘Not fast enough,’ the frycook said. ‘Maybe you should say hi, just in case.’

‘Come on, man, you should be on our side!’ Finn said piteously.

‘I will be once you pay.’

Rose jammed her hand into Finn’s pocket, slapped the credits cards on the counter, and grabbed up the bag of chunks. ‘There. Everyone’s even. Can you stall him for us?’

‘Naw,’ the frycook said. ‘He’s vegan.’

Rose yelled noiselessly. Finn finally allowed himself to be pushed deeper into the crowd by the tiny woman.

‘We can’t run,’ he said, passing her a rote-dog. Rose clutched it. ‘We’d never get out of those decontamination locks fast enough.’

‘Maybe?’ She reconsidered. ‘Better to be suspicious than caught.’ She crammed the food into her mouth and used her free hands to shove Finn into the depths of a coat stall.

‘Aren’t we _looking_ for people to convert?’

‘You can’t convert people who walk around in uniforms they didn’t earn,’ she retorted, peering out between the forest of sleeves. Finn snuck a look over her head.

The First Order cadet was drifting slowly through the crowd, eyes searching. Finn noticed that his cadet’s uniform was neatly fitted but battered and dingy, the matching cap replaced by a local handmade hat in a similar colour.

‘Maybe not,’ he admitted. ‘But… he looks like he’s strapped.’

‘What part of ‘he’d sell out the governor’ didn’t you understand?’ Rose snapped. ‘He’s desperate, not… desperate the _other_ way. We’re here to rescue people who need rescuing, not to bail Academy brats out of their student loans.’

‘Desperate is desperate,’ Finn said. ‘By definition.’ He squared his shoulders into the familiar Representative of the First Order stance. ‘Hold my chunks.’

‘ _Finn -_ ‘

Finn stepped grandly out from his hiding place behind the coatrack. The stall owner yelped in surprise.

‘Hey! You want privacy? Try the public bathrooms like a normal person!’

Finn dusted the savoury black carcel dust from his fingers and levelled his best Phasma expression at the merchant.

‘Be glad I didn’t need a bathroom, citizen,’ he said coldly.

The merchant frowned. ‘What?’

_Okay, maybe that was more intimidating coming from someone in a chromium mask._ ‘Go about your business. Go on, now!’

‘ _You_ go, stranger! This is _my stall!_ ’

The First Order cadet, overhearing, stopped to stare. Finn turned his back on the merchant and looked directly at him.

‘Hey,’ he said.

The cadet, reasserting himself, frowned. ‘Citizen.’

‘ _You’re still here,_ ’ the merchant snarled. Finn glided towards the cadet without deigning to look back.

‘Academy cadet, huh?’ He grinned, trying not to sweat. _How is it too hot in here? We’re in a cave on an ice planet!_

‘Yes,’ the other said stiffly. ‘Cadet Rojag, lieutenant class.’

‘Wow. Can I call you Jaggy?’

Rojag went red. ‘ _Absolutely not._ ’

‘Okay.’ Finn thought hard about other potential methods of bonding. ‘What’s it like in the First Order?’ _How can I sound casual about this?_ ‘Is it, uh, rewarding?’

‘It’s not lucrative, if that’s what you’re asking,’ the cadet growled before cutting himself off. ‘That is- Well, you wouldn’t understand.’

‘I might,’ Finn said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘You want to grab a rote-dog? I know a good place.’

‘This is the _only_ place, stranger,’ Rojag said bitterly.

‘Right. Must be tough. So why are you here instead of at the Academy?’

Rojag drew back, his lip curling. ‘I don’t have to answer questions from a _civilian._ ’

_Darn. Uh –_ ‘I’m not a civilian.’

‘What?’

Finn lowered his voice. ‘I’m not. A civilian. Cadet Rojag.’

Rojag lowered his voice, too, to an angry hiss. ‘And what’re you going to tell me you are? A spy? A commando? A prince?’

‘I might be a prince,’ Finn said. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never checked. Do you know anywhere that’s missing a prince?’

‘ _I don’t have time for this._ ’

‘Okay, look. I’m just a guy. A guy with a lot of money. A guy looking to know some First Order guys.’

Rojag frowned, but he didn’t pull away. ‘Could you be less mysterious or is your orbit always this elliptical?’

‘When properly motivated.’ Finn waggled his eyebrows. ‘Can I motivate _you?_ ’

Rojag lost his temper. ‘I don’t have to listen to this kind of-!’

‘ _I’m trying to pay you to help me meet other First Order officers._ ’

‘I don’t _do_ that kind of-‘

‘ _For business!’_

‘ _I’m going to report you for-_ ‘

‘For what? Trying to be friendly with the government?’

‘Are you guys okay?’ Rose said, stepping in. Her curls trembled slightly with anxiety, but Finn recognised the look on her face as her best ‘I’m-General-Organa-And-I’m-Here-To-Settle-Your-Petty-Fights’ impression.

‘I’ve got this handled, citizen,’ Rojag began loftily, but Finn cut over him.

‘Hi, Rose!’ he said with his biggest, dumbest smile. ‘This guy seems very sympathetic.’

‘ _No-_ ‘ Rojag began to howl.

‘Oh,’ Rose said with the calm of someone resigned to watching a plan go down in flames. ‘That’s great. And I thought making friends here would be hard.’

Rojag’s attention finally switched away from Finn. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No,’ Rose said, but she turned quickly. ‘Come on, Finn, we’re bothering him.’

‘Uh –‘ Finn began.

‘ _Wait._ ’ Rojag grabbed Rose’s arm and began dragging her away. Finn jumped to save her, but Rose, hearing the change in the cadet’s voice, shook her head slightly. He swallowed and followed them instead.

Rojag looked quickly around, then, with a flick of his arm, shoved Rose into one of a line of corner booths. Finn stepped in after them, and Rojag shut the door with a smack of his fist on the console.

Finn looked around. It was cramped and there was a familiar fixture taking up most of the space.

‘Are we in a-‘

‘You’re one of the _Tico sisters,_ ’ Rojag hissed, jabbing a finger into Rose’s face.

Rose’s shoulder twitched, and a blaster appeared in her hand. The cadet wilted under her glare.

‘Yeah,’ she said. She grimaced, savouring it. ‘The last one.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Rose blinked. Finn blinked. Rojag, his face relaxing, shrugged.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

‘I heard you,’ Rose said. ‘You’re sorry for… me? For Paige?’

‘Yes,’ the cadet said. ‘Everyone knew you guys were Resistance sympathisers, but no one heard anything after you left. Your family always said you were recruited but other people said the Order rejected you way before that. You faked mica lung or something-’

Rose brought the blaster up again. ‘The First Order doesn’t _recruit._ The First Order _steals._ And we’re here to stop you.’

‘Unless you help us,’ Finn said. He would’ve punctuated the threat by drawing his own blaster, but unfortunately his arm was pinned against the battered antiseptic dispenser. _It may, in fact, be dispensing down my pants. Now would be a really terrible time to die._

‘If I didn’t want to help you, I’d have arrested you on the spot,’ Rojag said. ‘The First Order owns this planet.’

‘Ownership doesn’t always take,’ Finn snapped.

‘And _you’re_ FN-21… something-something,’ the cadet said. He smirked ‘Your face is on the wall of every First Order canteen in the galaxy.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Finn said.

‘Get to the point, Rojag,’ Rose said evenly. ‘Or your face will be all over the wall of a public toilet.’

The cadet’s face briefly turned green. ‘Uh – okay. You say you’ve got creds?’

‘We only pay on delivery,’ Rose said. ‘You’re out of the Academy and coasting on your old uniform. You’re a wannabe. What could you give us?’

‘Give me enough to get back in.’ He pressed his bloodless lips together anxiously. ‘I’ll pass the Resistance information.’

‘In three years when you get a posting,’ Rose sneered.

‘Rose,’ Finn started. ‘We’re here to _recruit –_ ‘

‘We’re here to win a war, Finn,’ she snapped. ‘No more mistakes!’

‘I’m not a mistake, I swear!’ Rojag said, his hands flying up in defense.

Finn stared at the two of them.

‘Prove it,’ Rose told the cadet, her eyes locked on his.

‘I – I’m a regular at the bar the local installation frequents,’ Rojag said. ‘I know the officers there.’ Rose shifted her grip on him and he winced. ‘The younger ones – the lower ranks. The NCOs. He said you’re here to meet officers.’ He jerked his chin at Finn. ‘I know officers you can meet.’

‘So you’re just a middle-man, is what you’re saying,’ Rose said, pushing the blaster closer.

‘No!’ The cadet twisted his face away from the gun, into the grimy, oily wall of the cubicle. ‘I walk with them sometimes. I know their routines. I can _get_ you their routines.’

‘We don’t want to know their lifestyle regimens,’ Rose said warningly.

‘Wait,’ Finn said. ‘It’s a start.’

‘It’s not enough to trust this guy for!’

‘What’s the alternative, Rose?’

Rose paused. Then she flushed. ‘… _Fine._ ’

‘Fine?’ Rojag panted.

‘ _Fine,_ ’ she said, backing the blaster away from his face. ‘You’ve got twelve hours to be useful to us. And you better think about how my definition of ‘useful’ differs from yours.’

‘Don’t turn us in,’ Finn added. ‘Let me tell you, being on the run from an army? Not fun.’

Rojag nodded and fumbled for the door catch. ‘I’ll… I’ll comm you.’

They all spilled out in a rush, and Rojag shot away through the crowd like an eel.

‘We better stay on the move,’ Finn said.

‘No. He came to us,’ Rose said, hiding her blaster back beneath her thick coat. ‘Even if he decides to flip on the deal, he’ll give us until the end of the twelve hours. If only because that’s when he’ll know how to find us.’

* * *

In the end, they went back to the Ticos’ homestead.

_No more putting off_ this _conversation,_ Rose thought, pawing the outer door catch with her mitten. It opened and she stepped in, automatically raising her chin to avoid the worst of the decontaminating blast. Then, with Finn coughing behind her, she crossed through the inner door and into the circular all-purpose living room.

The room sat at the centre of the house, surrounded by hexagonal rooms for sleeping, cooking, and storage. As such, it had no windows; instead the matte silver walls led straight up to a clear transparisteel ceiling looking up into the frozen sky. The skylight dimmed depending on the weather and ultraviolent forecasts, but it was never opaque. _That’s why Paige always wanted to fly. There wasn’t a moment growing up when we couldn’t see the sky._

The time was smack between lunch and dinner but the table in the centre of the orange padded conversation pit was loaded with small plates holding different combinations of dishes on them, each serving balanced for a particular palate or desired flavour combination. Only the best cooks knew how to achieve the maximum array of flavour profiles from the fewest dishes; Rose felt a stab of pride in her father’s taste. _And only the most aggressive hostess would leave them out for hours on the off chance she might get to press them on her guests._ She knew it was inadvisable to refuse altogether; _at least this Rojag deadline means we have a few hours to spend with them._

‘Do we have time to eat?’ Finn asked. He sounded more wary than hungry this time.

‘It would be polite,’ Rose said grimly.

‘I mean – shouldn’t we let the Resistance know what’s going on so we have backup in case that guy decides to turn us in?’

‘Spies don’t get backup, Finn,’ she said. ‘That’s what we get for not being soldiers. We don’t kill people, so people don’t show up to kill for us.’

‘I was thinking, like, a ride off this rock?’

‘If we don’t come back, they’ll know anyway.’ Rose was distracted, chucking her jacket into a storage room. She shut the door and crossed to the table of food without looking back at him. _There’s so much of it. Did we always have this much food?_ She tried to remember the scanty Resistance rations, but failed; _I don’t think I’ve been paying attention to what I eat. Meals aren’t fun anymore._

‘Rose?’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t be here at all.’

‘What?’ Finn frowned.

‘There’s no money in the Outer Rim,’ she said, whirling as her temper flared. ‘There are governors and mine owners, and everyone else works for them and _hates_ them. The Order’s exactly the same – one person on top, everyone else on the bottom – so, honestly? Everyone in the Outer Rim is a potential rebel. And Hays Minor’s too poor even for the Galactic citizen registry. That’s why the Order recruits here – if you’re not Galactic-registered, you’re expendable.’ She grimaced. ‘At least they can’t tell you’re unregistered just by looking at you. Which means that, even if someone finds out I’m a rebel, it won’t necessarily lead to my family unless whoever finds me knows them, too.’

‘Yeah… that’s why we came here…’ Finn said uneasily. They both knew the brief. ‘The Order recruits here but it’s backwater enough that we can fly under the radar and recruit too.’

‘But Rojag recognised me,’ Rose said. ‘And we can’t trust him.’

‘I _told_ you –‘

She threw her arm out, overheated from the sun streaming through the focal lens of the open ceiling. ‘I thought we’d be safer here than anywhere else. I never thought my own neighbours would be dangerous to me. They _know_ me, Finn! They know my family! They know we’ve only ever tried to do the right thing! And they know the Order is evil! I shouldn’t have to worry about the likes of a wannabe like _Rojag._ Why is everyone just letting this happen?’

‘That guy’s flipping on the First Order,’ Finn said soothingly. ‘He’s got more to worry about than turning in your family. You’re the only rebel in it, anyway, right?’

Rose flushed angrily. ‘I am _now._ ’

‘So there’s no point in harassing them.’ Finn reached out and rubbed her arms. ‘Okay, so you painted a target on your back. Doesn’t mean you can’t be a moving target.’

She looked away. ‘Espionage is pretty different from patching up astrodroids.’

‘We’re all learning on the job.’

‘Not a good way to fight a war,’ said Gran Jammer Tico, a pale woman with creased, square features, a squat white hair style, and an augmented mechanic’s suit in an assertive orange. She eased herself through the entry to her workshop, then let go of the doorjamb and, sliding across on her seat-based hoverpad, settled regally into the conversation pit next to her granddaughter. ‘I don’t know why mechanics aren’t enough for you anymore. They’re what you’re good at, so why are you back here playing military recruiter?’

‘The Resistance needs volunteers more than it does astrodroids right now,’ Rose said grimly.

‘As if you’re not keen enough for ten of them. Present company excepted, of course,’ she said, graciously remembering Finn just in time and covering her error by turning to the wall-mounted warming over. ‘Now, drink this now or you’ll choke on your own mucus.’

Finn accepted the vial of steaming charcoal water with fascination, but Rose wrinkled her nose. ‘Thanks, but we used our masks all day.’

‘Drink it anyway, it’ll leach out your friend’s carcel breath.’

‘ _Gran._ ’

‘I don’t know what else you’d expect me to eat with a rotedog,’ Finn said, leaping to Rose’s defense, utterly ignorant to the fact that he was in fact the one under attack. ‘It’s carcel chunks or nothing.’

Gran Jammer looked disbelievingly at her granddaughter. ‘You took him to the Sebris Beta market and you let him eat a _rotedog?_ ’

‘I always eat rotedogs when I go places,’ Finn said. ‘They’re always good.’

‘But did you notice they never get any better?’ Rose’s grandmother asked acidly. ‘That’s because they were all made as Imperial rations three decades ago and their warehouse was only recently rediscovered after the Empire’s records got lost after the war.’

Finn frowned. Rose butted the table with her hand.

‘That’s propaganda, Gran! The First Order just doesn’t want people to accept food from the Resistance.’

‘How do you know it’s a First Order lie?’ Her grandmother argued. ‘It doesn’t say anything about the First Order! It’s a health advisory!’

‘What, like when the holonet told you charcoal water detoxes your lungs?’ Rose snorted. ‘We don’t drink water with our _lungs_.’

‘The charcoal is for your blood,’ Gran Jammer said icily.

‘Plain steam is enough for everyone else on the planet.’

‘How can rotedogs be old Imperial rations?’ Finn asked plaintively. ‘We didn’t get anything _close_ to that good in the Order canteen!’

‘And you went straight from the Order’s rations to the Resistance’s?’ Gran arched her neck. ‘I’ll bet you’ve never eaten real food in your life.’

‘Okay, enough, Gran,’ Rose said. ‘We’ll eat Dad’s food.’

‘Go get your father.’ Gran preened, satisfied. ‘Now, Finn – what kind of flavours are you feeling like today?’

‘Whatever flavours a rotedog has?’

Rose left them and crossed to the kitchen door, which slid open to reveal two hexagonal rooms with the partition knocked down, the walls sealed with an unbroken sheet of white ceramic and portable steel cooktops and prep cabinets wheeled out of the way. Her father, Stroy Fayn, stood at a broad wheeled table with a temporary plastic hood draped over it. He was in one of his ancient hazard suits, repurposed after being discarded by jypso miners, and his long, dark, deep-cut features were pinched under a high twisted bun.

‘We’re ready to eat now, Dad, thanks,’ Rose said. She hovered at the far end of the room, cautious. ‘Are they still making you work at home?’

‘The Order is cracking down on workplaces outside of the mines,’ her father replied, his eyes fixed on the tabletop as he sorted silicate lumps from jypso dust samples. ‘They say they’re fostering traditional family living.’

‘They don’t want to encourage groups in places they can’t monitor,’ Rose guessed.

Her father shrugged, still not looking at her. ‘The air quality’s probably better here than if I worked in the mining complex. Don’t worry, I’m careful not to put your gran in danger.’

‘If she can survive with all that datapad liquiglass in her system, she can probably survive a little jypso poisoning.’ Rose watched his hands, nimble in spite of the ill-fitting patched gauntlets. ‘Thanks for cooking.’

‘I was careful,’ Stroy said, indicating the distant cooktops with an elbow.

‘We don’t get anything like your cooking in… the base.’

‘I wanted to do it for you.’

‘I wanted you to do it.’

Stroy put his fists down against the table and looked in her direction, still unable to meet her eyes. ‘It’s the middle of my workday and I have to finish this. Go, eat lunch.’

‘Okay,’ Rose said. She pressed her lips together. ‘Sorry I was late, Dad.’

She backed out of the room and almost tripped over the edge of the conversation pit.

‘What’s going on?’ Finn asked, half-rising.

‘Nothing,’ she said, clambering blindly down into her seat. ‘Dad’s busy right now. We should go ahead.’

‘Work is good,’ Gran Jammer said firmly, pressing another cup of steaming black water on her granddaughter. ‘Work solves problems.’

‘Other people’s problems,’ Finn put in smartly. The Ticos smiled.

‘Some problems are everybody’s problems,’ Gran Jammer said. ‘Now, eat something, Rose, or you’ll be one of ‘em.’

* * *

The twelve hours dragged in spite of Rose and Finn’s nerves. They flitted in and out of the homestead, de-icing the Tico’s vegetable frames, patching the cracks in the house’s exterior, and bracing the low ferrocrete wall which was the only thing barring the garden from the sheer drop to the frozen beach below. When night fell, they retreated indoors and Rose helped Gran Jammer with her datapad repair jobs while Finn circled the central living area, worrying.

‘It’s almost time,’ he said, pouncing on Rose as she left her grandmother’s workroom. ‘Should we… set a trap or something?’

‘We should get dressed,’ Rose said. ‘We’ll meet him outside. If something goes wrong, I don’t want Dad or Gran in the line of fire.’

‘What do you think will go wrong?’

Rose stretched her lips in a smile. ‘Nothing!’

They waited in the decontamination chamber, suffering the chlorinated air for the sake of warmth, taking turns peering out the glassed-in face plate. Finn was the one who saw the slim figure approaching, outlined by the neighbour’s cold yellow area light.

‘Okay, he’s here. Looks like he’s alone.’ He craned right and left to make sure. ‘I mean, it looks that way. It’s, uh, dark.’

‘Stay behind me and keep an eye out,’ Rose said. Her hand rested on her breast pocket, over her blaster. ‘It’s gonna be okay, Finn.’

‘Please,’ he said fervently.

She smiled at him. ‘I know you hate a firefight on a full stomach.’

They braced themselves and Rose punched the door’s console. It slid open, the residual decontamination gas billowing up into the freezing air. Some of it crystallised instantly, clinging to their green Rebellion surplus coats in a sparkling orange sheen. Rojag had enthroned himself in the centre of the spotlight, wearing a thick air-insulated coat – _in a black he hopes will look like a First Order greatcoat,_ Rose thought with an internal snort. _What a tryhard._

‘Cadet Rojag,’ she said formally, stepping forward into the pool of yellow light in the howling black snowfall. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

‘No gracious opening?’ Rojag seemed to have plastered over his ruffled dignity in the past few hours.

‘No time wasted where the Order can peg us both,’ Rose said crushingly. _I’ve got more experience playing war than you do, wannabe._

‘Ah – right.’ Rojag paused to collect himself, then reached into his pocket.

‘ _Stop._ ’ Rose drew her blaster. ‘I thought you were here to give us information, Rojag.’

‘I’ve got more than that,’ he said. ‘You want me to show you or not?’

‘ _Slowly._ ’ The nose of her blaster followed him. ‘Thumb and finger only.’

Rojag shot her a nasty look, but curled his hand up obediently. He dipped into his pocket, then pulled out a small pyramid-shaped object. It shimmered slightly with electricity.

‘A datacron?’ Rose frowned.

‘One of the officers I know left me alone in her office for a couple minutes,’ Rojag said. ‘I managed to copy this from her open datapad. It’s a personnel list.’

‘ _I_ could give you a list of personnel,’ Finn said from his post. ‘Hell, you could do it off the top of your head, Jaggy.’

Rojag’s hand clenched around the datacron. ‘This is recruitment specific. And it’s not just the Hays system – it’s the entire galaxy.’

Finn went nerveless for an instant, his eyes locking on the cadet. ‘ _It’s a list of where every stormtrooper in the galaxy came from?!_ ’

The cadet flipped the datacron from Finn’s reach. ‘How valuable am I to you now, rebel scum?’

Rose screwed up her eyes, sensitive to her partner’s pain but unable to give ground. ‘Okay, Cadet. And just how do you propose we use this? We can’t blackmail every trooper in the Order.’

‘You don’t want it? Fine. I’ll be going then. I’m freezing my squeeds off out here anyway.’

‘ _Wait._ ’

Rojag stopped, raising an eyebrow. Finn shouldered past Rose.

‘Give it to me.’

Rose sucked in a breath, but let him take the lead. Finn advanced on the cadet, his hand out for the datacron, his other hand flat and nonthreatening.

‘Can we count on more help someday?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Rojag snapped, sufficiently distracted that he allowed Finn to take the datacron from his hand. ‘This is enough. And besides, I’m doing this to get back into the First Order, not bring it down. This is the end of our acquaintance.’

‘Fine by us,’ Rose said.

‘Here.’ Finn punched a number into the face of a credcard, sealed it with his fingerprint, then pushed it into the cadet’s hand. ‘Like we promised.’

Rojag looked at the amount, his face twisted. Rose saw him consider arguing it.

‘One of your precious Order patrols will be along any minute,’ she warned. Rojag’s head snapped back up.

‘Fine,’ he said, stuffing his hands – and the credcard -- into his pockets. ‘Now get off this planet. If you stick around they’ll trace that theft to me, not the rebels who made a getaway.’

Rose hesitated.

‘Okay,’ Finn said. He backed away.

‘But if you’re not helping us anymore, then we’re not helping you,’ Rose added quickly.

‘I don’t need help, rebels.’ Rojag hunched his shoulders and retreated back from the yellow-lit splotch on the street, through the curtains of dark snowfall, until his slender form vanished.

Finn and Rose watched that point for a long while, braced, anxiety at a quivering peak -- until their energy suddenly burned out, and they let themselves slump. The snow battered down, slicing into their exhaustion-bruised faces before boiling away. Finn wiped the ice from his mouth.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘None of us are dead!’

‘Win some, lose some,’ Rose said, still glaring after Rojag. ‘Let’s grab our bags. We’ve got to get out of here before that glorychaser screws his courage back up.’

* * *

Finn, more cautious than Rose, had favoured leaving their Resistance-issue jumpship in orbit and taking a standard mining freighter down to the surface. Rose, however, argued that she knew the landscape enough to stash their jumpship somewhere it wouldn’t be found.

‘You were right,’ Finn panted, scrambling down the cliff path after Rose, his breath shortened by the weight of the pack on his back. ‘I’d have hated to make a last-minute getaway in a mining freighter.’

‘Yeah, last-minute getaways are so much more fun in your own ship,’ Rose joked, her mood lightening the farther she got from Sebris Beta, and her family… and Rojag. _Backwards but it’s true._

‘At least I don’t have to readjust my seat every time we board,’ Finn agreed. ‘I have a long torso and short legs, do you know what kind of struggles I go through?’

‘If they’re that short, you’ll have to move that much faster!’ Rose’s boots hit the beach, thick soles crunching through the icy snow layers the gritty sand beneath. She took off running, straight out.

Finn moaned and followed.

They ran farther and farther out, ignoring the long tears in the terrain their feet left. The ground grew slicker, the friction of the sand replaced by the salt-pocked ice of the frozen sea. Rose had grown up playing far out on the sea, fishing, sledding, and digging into the ancient ice for mummified creatures trapped in it centuries before. But that was during the day, when she could see and find her way back. Now it was the middle of the night, and the snowfall was getting thicker and thicker, the blackness closing around them. The red stealth lights clipped to their coats were designed to illuminate as little as possible, and were only a red mist against the dark. More than once they stumbled on crystals or rosettes of tainted jypso, white-tipped and invisible against the dirty snow ground cover. Their heavy soles kept them from turning an ankle, but they were still heavy, and Rose’s legs were screaming after only a few minutes.

She kept one eye on her wrist-mounted maptracker, staying straight on towards their ship’s waypoint. When they were within a hundred yards she punched a button to start the engines. She couldn’t hear the groaning chug of the engines heaving into gear over the wind, but she kept going, having to trust that the ship was still there. She was relieved when a white glow rose up to drown their red lamps; they were there at last.

Finn slowed beside her, and they walked the last few feet, arms carefully outstretched, until their gloves met the battered face of a huge jypso crystal, jutting out of the ice like a berg, taller than a building and wider than a city block. Their jumpship was settled behind it, in case a clear day had broken over Sebris Beta and someone had decided to gaze into the horizon.

Rose put her right hand on the crystal and followed its wall around, the white glow of their ship brightening with every step. Soon it was so bright it filled their eyes, and the edge of the huge crystal beside them was clearly visible as a dark wall against the light.

Then a dark, slender form detached itself from the wall before them, sliding across their field of vision to flank them. She stumbled to a halt.

‘Dammit, Jaggy,’ Finn shouted over the wind.

‘We’ve got you surrounded, sarlacc spit,’ Rojag shouted, turning so his profile was just visible in the light.

‘Who’s ‘we’, dropout?’ Rose yelled, hoping against hope the cadet was bluffing.

Six other forms stepped into the light from the draped dark of the storm: First Order stormtroopers, their helmets hooded against the snow, the same red stealth lights that Rose and Finn wore bolted to their breastplates. The red glow sharpened the edges of their boots against the stained snow and faded as it fought up against the pressing darkness, making the soldiers’ dark heights blend impossibly far up into the black.

‘Oh,’ Rose said.

‘Didn’t think the Order wanted much to do with traitors,’ Finn remarked, vibrating with the effort of his casual manner. ‘I know that from experience.’

‘So you admit you’re rebels!’ Rojag said.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Finn said. ‘Infamously. Don’t you guys read your own wanted posters?’ But he was backed up against the enormous crystal, back pressed into it defensively. Rose pushed her chin forward.

‘He gave us a whole datacron of information,’ she shouted, pointing at Rojag. ‘Don’t you want to know what it was? _He’ll_ never tell you, he’s trying to save his own skin!’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the red-striped squad leader said, voice mechanical through his helmet’s mask. ‘You’ll never have a chance to use it.’

‘You can’t intimidate me,’ Rose said. Her brain whirled; _if we could just get to the ship-!_ ‘The Resistance is bigger than all this. There are more of us than you know!’

‘We do know,’ the squad leader said, shouldering his weapon. ‘But not for long.’

_What?_ Rose thought.

Then Finn whipped out his blaster, jammed it into the face of the vast jypso crystal, and pulled the trigger.

The crystal exploded. Shards shot past Finn and Rose, biting deeply into the troopers’ armour. Dust burst into the air, fogging it so thickly even their screams were muffled. A heavy shivering noise broke overhead, and Finn, the only one not taken off his guard, whipped around and barrelled into Rose, knocking her clear as the top of the crystal splintered into boulders. They cannoned down, slamming into the ice, shattering it. Rose couldn’t even see where the snow troopers were now, let alone the unarmoured Rojag. She scrambled to her feet, pushing herself up – but her hands jerked under her, then sank.

_‘Finn!_ ’ she yelled. The broken ice, just floating shards now, rippled under her knees.

‘Okay, this part I didn’t plan _,_ ’ he screamed back, juggling his weight on his feet, bent almost double.

‘Spread your weight!’ she shouted, edging carefully forward. ‘The ship’s lights are still there, it’s gotta be on solid ice!’

‘I wish you’d said ‘solid ground’ instead, but all right!’ he said.

It only took a minute or so before Rose, inching forward, could finally put her feet under herself again, but it felt like an eternity. No stormtrooper shots came out of the dark, no one tackled her into the icy water sucking beneath her, and no more crystal fell past her and locked her far down into the depths. But then she was scrambling upright, Finn already there and helping her up, and they ran together up their jumpship’s gangplank.

Rose pounded her fist on the cargo console, folding up the gangplank, while Finn, shedding his coat, bolted for the guns in the rear cockpit. Rose waited, antsy, as the gangplank – also the floor of the ship’s only corridor – sealed itself into position, then sprinted over it to the forward cockpit. She hit the radar switch, spared it the briefest glance to ensure they weren’t about to hit anything, then jammed the thrusters.

Barely more than two transparisteel cockpits welded together by a single wide corridor, the ship was theoretically easy to fly – but the simplicity of its controls had been at the cost of maneuverability. It took Finn a few moments to realise that Rose, only a passable pilot, wasn’t leaving the atmosphere.

‘What are we doing?’ he said into her headpiece. ‘We’ve got to get outta here!’

Rose was trying to fly slow but she kept hitting the stalling speed before she could switch to her hoverjets. She was freezing, her legs were soaked, and she was sweating. ‘That trooper said they knew the Resistance in the area.’

‘He just said that to keep us scared! They don’t know anything, otherwise they would’ve nailed any sympathisers before we even got here!’

‘They know two now,’ Rose said. ‘We’re going back for my family, Finn, and don’t try and talk me out of it.’

‘ _Aaaaaahhhh,_ ’ Finn yelled in frustration. _Or terror,_ Rose’s brain whispered over her heart’s thumping. Then the ship stalled out again, and she pushed the thrusters back online, the jerk almost rolling the ship. It took a few moments to right it again without overcompensating and rolling the other way entirely.

‘Sorry,’ she said. She meant to apologise for hijacking the mission. A brief silence from Finn. Then,

‘It’s not your fault you’re not Poe Dameron,’ he said. ‘Just get us there in one piece and we’ll get ‘em home free.’

Rose managed to straighten out, then switched on the wayfaring lights, and they powered through the snowstorm, the heat melting it into rain that slapped her cockpit. It was only a few seconds before the high beams picked out the outline of Sebris Beta. She tried to pull up into a hover, and almost skidded around in the air before she finally managed to switch the power to the jets. They hovered, sliding closer to the line of buildings spiralling up the mountain into the dark.

‘What the-?’ Finn muttered into their comlink. ‘The whole town’s outside?’

Rose realised instantly. ‘That huge crystal you blew up –‘

‘Holy sithspit,’ he said. Then a scuffling, and, looking over her shoulder, Rose saw him burst out of the gunner’s seat and punch the corridor console. She touched the yoke gently as the gangplank descended, trying to get as close to the cliff’s edge as possible without slamming into it or bucking Finn off the ship.

Finn, hanging onto a cargo net, stuck his head upside-down out of the ship.

‘ _TICOS!_ ’ he yelled.

The crowd, an indistinguishable black mass in the storm, shifted; then Stroy pushed his way to the front, into the view of the high beams, and Gran Jammer slid in his wake.

‘Finn?’ Stroy shouted. ‘Rose?’

‘She’s here!’ Finn yelled. ‘But the Order knows she’s here! We’re getting out and you’ve got to come with us!’

‘Come where?’ Stroy shouted. ‘This is my home! These are my neighbours!’

‘We’ve done what we can for them, Stroy!’ Gran Jammer shouted at her son-in-law. ‘We can’t do anything more if we’re dead!’ She looked up at Finn. ‘Drop us a ladder!’

Finn looked around, then pushed the end of the cargo net he was holding onto out past the gangplank. ‘I’ll pull you up!’

Gran Jammer prudently reached behind her and cranked up the hover support on her seat. Then, buoyed, she grabbed hold of the net and Finn yanked her in.

‘This,’ he panted as the old woman finally crawled over the lip of the gangplank. ‘Is harder than it looks.’

‘Oh, well,’ Rose’s grandmother said blandly. ‘My son should be able to do it on his own.’

‘Kriff, I hope so.’

Stroy came up stiffly, almost reluctantly, but under his own power. The dark crowd beneath the ship didn’t move, watching the drama with an artificial silence under the roar of the engines and the whip of the storm.

‘That’s it!’ Finn yelled at Rose. ‘Get ready to-‘

‘Wait!’ A woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd. She was dragging a teen-aged boy. ‘Wait! Take him, too, please!’

Finn stopped. Before he could do anything, a man came forward, the harsh lights of the jumpship flattening the planes of his face.

‘And my children!’ he yelled. ‘They’re too strong for their age, the Order will take them the first chance they get!’

‘Take me!’ a young woman blurted, still struggling into her coat as she fought free of the crowd. ‘I can fly!’

‘I can fix things!’

‘I know every supplier in the Outer Rim!’

‘My father worked for the Hutts, I can get you all the weapons you want!’

Finn looked at Gran Jammer, who smiled, and then Stroy, whose eyes remained slow and glassy, and then down the broad corridor to Rose’s cockpit. He could see her face reflected in the dark glass. Their eyes met. The ship didn’t falter.

Finn looked back down through the gangplank’s opening at the sea of volunteers.

‘All right!’ he yelled. ‘The Resistance is recruiting! Who’s in?’

* * *

The ship’s corridor was full when they finally broke atmosphere. A few of the children were sitting in their parent’s laps, but everyone else was standing, packed together like fuel cans. A surprising amount of people had been willing to give up their lives on a moment’s notice, but an even more surprising amount had decided to stay. One of the refugees who worked at the officer’s bar thought the Order had probably sent most of its personnel out to the site of the crystal explosion and had missed the town’s escape. Another refugee, who worked in the jypso mine under close Order supervision, thought it more likely that the Order had been taken by surprise by both the explosion and the crowds, and that their immediate response had been observation rather than action. No one really knew the situation they had left behind. Finn knew that, whatever it was, it would be ugly.

‘I’m amazed we got off-planet with the ship this full,’ he said, standing behind Rose in the forward cockpit. The woman who claimed she could fly had taken the rear in an attempt to stabilise Rose’s attempts at flight. ‘I just wish we could’ve taken more.’

‘I know.’ Rose said. Her voice was blotchy and heated. ‘It’s my fault.’

‘No, it’s the Order’s,’ Finn said. ‘And we’re stopping them.’

‘We’re supposed to be rescuing people!’ Rose cried. ‘Recruiting them! Not starting riots and leaving them to die!’

‘I don’t like fights any more than you do,’ Finn said. ‘Less, probably. But people die in a war, Rose. We just gotta keep going.’

‘I don’t want to go forward when I’ve messed up so bad _here_.’

‘You saved half the town.’ Finn stood aside as Rose’s father Stroy came into the cockpit. He reached around the pilot’s seat and touched his daughter’s shoulder. She finally turned and looked up into his face.

‘I should’ve taken them all.’

‘You should’ve,’ her father agreed. ‘But you couldn’t. Sometimes the right thing isn’t something that’s in your power to do. So you do half the right thing.’ His face balled up, thick with emotion, as he looked down into the all-too-familiar face of his daughter. ‘But you still did the right thing, Rose. I love you. And I’m so proud that I have you as my daughter.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’ she whispered.

Finn backed out of the cockpit to give them their privacy. Gran Jammer slid in as he left. The last thing Finn saw before the door slid shut was Rose, wrapped in the arms of her family and crying helplessly.


	4. Chapter 4

There were no obstacles on Mustafar’s charcoal beaches; they were flat and barren and crushed so easily underfoot it was possible to put a careless boot through the ground entirely. The obsidian shards that rained down were somewhat cushioned by the curtains of ash, and blanketed the stormtroopers’ shoulders in minutes. They chinked sightly as they moved, barely audible even to themselves over the roar of the lava that surrounded them. The lava poured in rivers and spit up around the immovable glassy boulders the size of star destroyers that studded the sweeping plain – or as much of it as was visible through the smoky haze. And the lava’s heat was inescapable and sliced across them like a hail of knives.

_Different than a lightsaber,_ Kylo Ren thought. _That’s so quick, it has no heat at all – just pain._ In comparison, this relatively painless heat was nothing -- it was only his imagination that his scar was channeling it into the marrow of his skull. _But that’s how it’s always been. Pain always finds me._ He twisted his heavy mouth, low-slung in a too-pale, too-strongly moulded face that was hastily set into a dank, dark nest of hair. _They can scorn my choices and they can mock my coldness, but pain is real, and they can’t laugh at that._

Pain he could meditate away, but unfortunately the heat was more resistant, even through his sealed mask. It came off the lava in waves, shimmering in tune with the slow decay of the shield generators that stood abandoned along the rough road that threaded through the smoke. Thank Sith they were still mostly working, or his stormtroopers would have had to deploy them, and it would have been frustratingly slow, careful, and frankly painful for all involved. His troopers knew better than to complain at serving under him, but he would have sensed the sulkiness behind their silence even without the Force. As it was, he could read almost word-for-word the uniformity of their complaints. It reminded him how bored he was with them. _The First Order is becoming too complacent in its bureaucracy. It’s not as unwieldy and neglectful as the Republic was, but it needs a slash on the flank. Or a culling of the herd._

The approach laid along the old forcefield turned around a mountain of fused charcoal and ash refuse, then dropped down into a depression hundreds of feet across. Floodplains of lava surged from every cardinal direction to fall into it, into a seething moat of fire. And jutting from the centre, choked in poisonous steam, was a broad black spire, carved from a single massive berg of burn-veined black glass.

‘Darth Vader’s fortress,’ one of the troopers – Fire -- said in awe. Then she caught herself. ‘Er – sir!’

Fire’s slip was inexperienced, not mutinous, so Kylo ignored her except to quicken his steps. Emboldened, another trooper, Scout, ventured, ‘Yeah, but… there’s no bridge.’

This Kylo could not ignore, and he stopped, chagrined. The spire’s peaked doorway was evident, directly across from them, but the road ran right up to the edge of the lava with no visible break.

The troopers hesitated, unsure whether they should scout the area, and eventually chose to clump into standard ready formation and await orders.

His expression safely hidden behind his mask, Kylo sucked his teeth to clean them of stray ash and thought. Then, when thinking yielded him nothing but frustration, he rivered the feeling down into the roiling of his gut and ignited the Force. Its hisses sprang alive in his mind: _I can run unchecked and roll fire over every atom of that charcoal plain; I can blast the lava out of its beds, so high it will become an impenetrable belt of asteroids; I can flatten those millenia-old boulders into sheets of diamond with the strength of your will alone_ …

Kylo ignored its demands, holding his sense of purpose down over them like a hand over a broken water pipe and directing the flow towards the fortress. _My desires, not yours,_ he instructed. _My plans, and no one – nothing! – else’s._

The Force grumbled as it always did, its suggestions bursting and bleeding out in his mind like boils, but finally it bled away in the direction he had instructed, its attention shifting to the new problem of the Spire. It ran over the blistered glass of the doorway, the walls, the plinth, palpating, searching for a control panel, or a weakness, or –

_A weighted trigger._ Kylo’s eyes flickered to where the Force indicated – underneath the lava moat. He pinched his eyes, pleased. _Good enough. Now – have your fun._

The Force retreated back to his core, condensing like a star… then Kylo heaved forward, thrusting his body as he flung out his arms and the Force screamed out of him like a star fighter, splitting the air so fast it shattered with a _boom._

The moat exploded. It blasted apart and away, the lava ripping up like water sheeting up against the wind, and an invisible saber sliced down through it to the black glass bone deep underneath. And it stayed there, a bare strike braced in walls of fire, a path embedded across the width of the moat from Kylo’s shivering frame to the front step of the Spire.

He was screaming. But he didn’t notice it until he saw the troopers lying back, frightened. Then he forced his voice to resolve into a word.

‘ _Go!_ ’

Sarge – _who should have learned by now_ – gripped his blaster and broke into a run. The rest of the troopers, taking what comfort they could in their deeply-ingrained formation, came after their superior officer as fast as they could. Kylo watched them flee across the narrow path he had created, their white armour cracking in the heat, stumbling perilously close to the lava, until, one by one, they finally arrived under the dark portico. Kylo stayed a moment longer, squinting through the haze of heat to be sure all six of them were out of the blast zone. Then, straining forward, pace by pace, all his attention on keeping his shield in place, he edged out himself.

Kylo kept his eyes on the ground. It was obsidian, like the Spire, and carved – but with what, he couldn’t see through the blinding heat wind. But the carvings gave his boots purchase on the glass -- and then, when he couldn’t see through his tears but couldn’t blink for fear of losing his fragile pact with the Force, they guided him.

He almost walked into the knot of troopers before he saw them. And then the realisation that he’d done it washed over him, and he dropped his arms. They fell, heavy and boneless with fatigue – but the lava did not. Gollops of it splashed down in slow, deadly drops, and the troopers skittered back again, flattening themselves against the huge doors, but Kylo brushed the spurts aside almost without noticing. _I can hold it in the back of my mind; I could hold it for days. Maybe longer? A permanent erection to my abilities!_ He was flush with the Force, his lungs swelling as his heart sped and roaring euphoria gushed through his gut. _I could blast the door open. I just pushed aside a river of fire – it would be easy. And why shouldn’t I? This is my birthright, after all!_

Kylo jutted out the heel of his palm in a calm, fluid strike, the troopers were knocked aside, and the obsidian doors of Darth Vader’s fortress – each a solid metre of stone – shattered inwards in thousands of scattering pieces.

He stepped forward over them. The troopers scrambled to their feet and followed, Sniper hanging back to help Heavy tug her gun away from where it balanced perilously over the lava.

Beyond was a hall, soaring the height of the whole Spire, the empty floor flat and polished and the walls streaking upwards into a vault ribbed with the natural conchoidal blades of broken obsidian. He felt a spike of fear from Scout and looked up with her. There was a smear of old blood on one of the ribs.

Kylo threw out an arm, and the troopers split: Scout and Fire forward, Heavy and Slicer following each wall, and Sarge and Sniper behind him to hold the doors. Kylo himself advanced, letting his mask filtre the darkness into a higher contrast.

‘Slicer,’ he said, and gestured.

Slicer hurried across to where Lord Ren stood, tugging down the padding that covered his wrist computer. He punched a button to boot it, made a few adjustments to the scanner settings onscreen, then lifted his head to sweep his visor methodically over the hall, capturing its bones for analysis. Ren leaned over his shoulder, tall and broad and impenetrable, and they both watched the computer’s small screen extrapolate and clarify out of the dimness.

‘Go to feed,’ Ren ordered.

‘Sir.’ Slicer swept a finger along the screen, and the refining filtre jumped into the group’s visors, flaring the nearest pockets of shadow away.

The whole interior of the hall was striped geometrically with paths of carvings – the same as those lining the path hidden beneath the lava moat.

Kylo suppressed an excited breath. The carvings seemed to pulse and grow, spreading farther, into the areas that were still dark, burning away from them like a fuse. And then – _they’re not paths to doors,_ Kylo puzzled. _They go… up the walls?_

He planted his feet wider and tilted his head up, watching the carvings climb. Then they flickered. Kylo shook his head – sometimes the wires in his newly-repaired mask needed a knock to connect – but the flickering was still there. Then it started dripping.

‘ _Above us!_ ’ he shouted, igniting his saber and yanking it over his head. He was almost too late – a shrivelled bipedal, its skull elongated and spraying teeth and ears like a rabbit, with rags of ash clinging to its shrivelled white skin and dripping from skeletal vestigial wings, swept down from the ceiling with the crouch and gaping talons of a predator. It shrieked when it saw his crackling red saber, too late to stop its fall, and it scissored itself helplessly on his blade, drenching him in thick white pus and scattering the flaccid tubes of its innards over the already-slick obsidian floor.

His communicator burst to life as the stormtroopers shouted.

‘ _Retreat!_ ’ Sarge howled; Splicer broke reluctantly from Ren’s side and fled back to the doors and Scout and Fire whipped by to join him. ‘Regroup at the entrance!’

Scout took a couple potshots up into the darkness before Sarge slapped her barrel down.

‘ _Wait_ until we’re all in formation, Scout! You want to whittle down your allies with friendly fire before we even know what’s up there?’

Scout snarled with frustration into her mic but the sound was lost as the troopers scuffled into position: Heavy crouched on point, Fire beside her with her nozzle dripping eager flames, and the others backed against the doors behind them. Then they fell silent, listening.

Kylo didn’t run; he flicked his blade to clear the handle of clotted debris and scanned the ridges of the ceiling. His lightsaber flared in his filtred vision, and he slammed his foot in frustration as he whirled, trying for a better view.

‘Flare!’ Fire shouted. A pop and a hiss, and Kylo dimmed his visor in time to watch red chemical light spread over the ceiling, illuminating every groin and knife-edged rib.

There were a dozen of the creatures, caught in the act of creeping down the ribs as they recoiled in the light. Their rabbit-skull heads were down, their crumbling cartilage ears plastered back, and their talons were dug into the obsidian like it was butter. Far above them, in a nave plastered with layers of ashy paper licked into hexagons and crystallised in saliva, were cocoons. Half of them were torn open, and prolapsed birthing membranes sagged out, drooling down the walls in ropes as if they could support those dragging them.

‘It’s a _nest,_ ’ Fire said, gulping sickly through her awe.

‘It’s a stationary target!’ Sarge snapped. ‘ _Shoot it!_ ’

Their blasts ripped upwards, but the creatures, though unable to fly, could spring and claw, and they bounced from rib to rib, evading the bolts. Too late, the troopers realised the obsidian glass of the hall was reflective, and threw themselves into disarray to escape the ricochets. Kylo skidded back towards them, deflecting some of the bolts with his saber. One of them finally hit a creature, and it fell, screaming.

‘Get up! Pick your shots!’ Sarge ordered, scrambling to his feet. His troopers did the same. ‘Lord Ren needs cover fire!’

‘Cover _yourselves_ ,’ Kylo snarled. He flicked his cloak away, then hauled back and threw his saber. It arced up, whirling, and sliced across the wrists of a descending creature before the force of Ren’s fist sucked it back. The creature shrieked, its forearm bones snapping forward off its hands – claws still dug into the wall – and it plummeted headfirst to its death.

‘Yes, _sir_!’ Slicer skidded forward and dumped his backpack in front of the troopers’ formation. Working quickly, he popped their portable cover shield. It was low – below shoulder height – but it was enough to give the troopers some confidence. ‘We’ve only got a few minutes of this, so you’d better take advantage…’

‘They’re climbing down, not up!’ Sarge ordered, dropping left to keep an eye on his squad. ‘Aim for their faces!’

Scout, used to making do with nothing more than a sidearm, let out a steadying breath and managed to catch a creature just right, straight up through its chest; it didn’t even have the breath to scream as it died, its breath sucking and bubbling through the pus that exploded out from between its ribs. Ren yanked the body out of the air and flung it at two of its kin, the dead limbs knocking them loose to split their skulls on the black glass floor.

The troopers began to loosen formation as the creatures’ numbers dropped and they recovered a sense of their space. Heavy moved left, flanking the more lightly-armed troops. ‘Push ‘em together!’

‘I _know,_ dammit.’ Scout, a little quicker off the mark, was already clicking her rifle from single shot to bursts. She aimed up and sprayed an arc beneath the nearest knot of the creatures. They retreated, mouths gaping in rage, moving slowly up against the pull of gravity. The moment they were forced tightly enough, Heavy cranked her massive weapon to life, the barrels spinning up an instant before the spray of bolts began. She couldn’t resist a victorious grunt into her communicator as the shots smashed the wiry creatures into ragged meat and their cartilege and marrow smeared together across the glass. The remaining creatures scattered like flies from a carcass, and splinters of obsidian exploded down. The troopers ducked.

‘Single shots! Light weaponry!’ Sarge howled. ‘We don’t want the ceiling shattering on us!’

‘Single shots is what I do.’ Sniper pushed forward and slung her long rifle loose, planting it on the hard upper rim of the shield. Slicer leaned as far away as he could without losing track of the shield generator as Sniper popped her barrel brace and took aim. One of the creatures, bolder than the rest, had taken advantage of the particularly broad rib it had chosen to conceal his descent. It was almost to the floor, one arm already extended to begin skittering across it towards Lord Ren, who was too busy slashing at creatures dancing up out of his reach to notice. A splitting _bang_ from Sniper’s powerful long rifle, and the creature jerked backwards, chest shattering against the wall like a thrown egg. The high-energy bolt cut through its body entirely and shivered into the atoms of the wall; it cracked with a squeal and a noise like thunder. The creatures shrieked in unison with it and pulled up and away – where they hovered, having learned distance.

‘I said _light weaponry!_ ’ Sarge snapped. ‘That means sidearms, Sniper!’

‘Sidearm bolts won’t reach that far and stay true to aim,’ Sniper argued.

‘At least with assault and heavy weapons we can _keep_ them away,’ Heavy said, taking a stab at a middle path.

‘For ten minutes,’ Slicer muttered, glancing at the ammo readout in his visor.

‘Lord Ren!’ Sarge spit. ‘We’re playing defense! What are your orders?’

Ren snarled in frustration; the creatures had learned distance.

‘Fire unit!’ he shouted.

‘It won’t reach that high, sir!’ Fire replied, moving gingerly towards him. A creature leapt for the lone trooper, and Kylo batted it impatiently aside with a single deadly sweep of his saber.

‘ _Do it!’_ he snarled.

‘Do it, trooper!’ Sarge ordered.

Fire thrust the nozzle of her flamethrower up towards the far-off nave and squeezed the trigger. A spurt of fire – significant, but not more than a few feet – fountained up. But Ren thrust out a palm and squeezed it into a fist, jerking up – and then it was a powerful jet of flame. The creatures screamed; Ren dragged the flame across the walls and caught two of them, and they caught fire immediately, flame spreading over their ashy skin in an instant before they swelled and popped like boils. The pus and flesh sprayed out in an arc, and the troopers ducked – they couldn’t keep themselves from being doused in it, but at least they could keep their visors clearn. Even Ren wasn’t immune, as the yellow-white liquid crackled into oily cinders on his saber and drifted into the folds of his surcoat. Only Slicer, snug against the shield, remained clean – so he was the one who saw the fire spread up and into the nest burrowed into the far-off nave.

The paper nest burst apart in a storm of ash and fire, howling like a living being and then sweeping down like an arm, spouting a last gasp of ash. The troopers and even Ren ducked again, hands over their visors and breathing apparatus as they strugged to keep them clean of the greasy crumbs of the dead. Sniper, on point, caught the brunt of it and fell to her knees, scrabbling at her helmet; she managed to yank it off in time to retch painfully against the relatively clear air behind the barrier, lank black hair glued to her thin white mouth.

But finally the ash settled, and they straightened, slowly. Heavy, ignoring Sarge’s glare, set her multi-barrelled weapon down for a moment to comfort Sniper, whose eyes and mouth were streaming. Slicer shifted away from the puddle around Sniper’s knees, pulling his shield generator’s console with him.

Gathering themselves, they looked up. The nave was clear, the drifts of nesting paper scorched away as if they were never there. The only thing that remained was the clutch of unopened cocoons, melted to the ceiling and cracks of fire showing through them as they held the heat within their crystal shells, cooking their unborn occupants alive.

‘Done and dusted,’ Heavy said, chuckling at her own joke.

‘No chatter,’ Sarge snapped. ‘Sweep the hall for strays.’

Scout moved right and Heavy moved left, flanking Fire and Ren as they kicked up the detritus carpeting the hall, searching for survivors or traps. Slicer warily closed up his shield, and Sniper stood, pulling her long rifle back into place over her shoulder and drawing her sidearm to cover the tech trooper. Sarge came forward to mutter over Lord Ren’s shoulder.

‘There could be others in the building, my Lord.’

‘And now we know how to kill them,’ Ren replied, without much interest. ‘Are all the doors sealed?’

_Not for someone who can explode them by pointing at them,_ Sarge thought. ‘Not insurmountably, my Lord.’

Ren snorted – it didn’t sound angry, to Sarge’s ears – and strode forward to the arch directly across from the entrance. Sarge opened his mouth to summon his troopers back into a breach formation, but Ren – without even bothering to raise his hand this time – blew the door. This time, its shards didn’t fall; they remained where they were, spinning slightly as if they were each in their own bubble of zero-gravity, and Kylo brushed through them as if he hadn’t even noticed their existence.

_There isn’t even any blowback to his Force explosions,_ Sarge thought. Clamminess swept across his skin beneath his split and ash-stained armour. _People used to worship this stuff? It’s scary as frak._ His eyes fell back down to Lord Ren’s form, advancing beyond the twinkling shards of obsidian into the dark. _No one should willingly be around a power like that…_

‘Stay there, Sergeant.’ Lord Ren’s voice pierced back through to them. ‘I can handle this alone.’

_Did he hear me?_ Sarge snapped to action.

‘All right, troops, this isn’t your first rancor ride! Finish the sweep! Slicer, hack all exit door mechanisms; Sniper, stand watch on our retreat. Everyone else, secure our position! Come on, do you want _two_ firefights on a Friday afternoon? Let’s go!’

* * *

Ren tuned out his troops’ comms chatter the same way he did their thoughts – the same way he did almost everyone’s thoughts. The Force ignited in his gut and swept upwards in a wave of heat, blurring the world and isolating his mind in a dull howling shell of power. Then he took the shell in his fist, with the foreign voices trapped in it, and jammed it into his deepest recesses, as far away from his own thoughts as he could. He knew this could dull his mind to any surprise attacks, but he felt confident that he now knew the abilities of the creatures they had encountered. _I have little to fear anymore._

He shifted his grip on his defused saber hilt, dislodging a stray shard, and paced away into the dark opening he’d blown. The invisible room beyond was hot and viscous, like the gut of a Rishi ink eel, and just as blindingly black. Through his boots he could feel that the floor had the same polished slickness as the entrance hall, but there were no other distinguishing marks – no recessed lighting, no marked paths. The air, though dank, didn’t feel thick enough for the space to be a small room, so he increased his pace. And again. And then again. And still he just walked on and on.

At length Kylo stopped, the familiar rage bursting up in his again. _Is this a joke? A moving walkway or something like that?_ His visor was a dull blur of unbroken night-vision green, and, with a snarl at being forced to stoop to it, he ignited his lightsaber for light.

His hilt spit and crackled with its usual intensity, and it took him a moment to notice that the falling red sparks had ignited something on the floor. The flickers were tiny, gasping for survival like tiny flecks of fired oil, but slowly managed to gather themselves and spread across the space -- another black glass space, a long corridor this time, with ribs coming to a sharp point overhead. The nave, he noticed, was empty.

Kylo swept his saber down, closer to the red glow, and realised it was fragmented into the same carvings which had wound through the spire and its grounds, guiding him through magma and death and impenetrable walls. And now that he was at the end, they rewarded him for his trials by paving his way in fire to his grandfather’s sanctum.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, his words reverberating through his mask. ‘Show me, grandfather.’

The carvings said nothing. He didn’t really expect they would, of course. But as they glowed brighter, their edges more defined, something finally clicked in his mind – an ancient memory from a life he’d left behind. _They’re Sith!_

And then the familiar rage spiked inside him again, that his training had been so restrictive, that he had been wilfully stunted by his uncle and his parents, that he was taught _nothing_ of his heritage or the broader world of the Force outside the diluted and censored version his vulnerable, unformed self was fed as pap to calm the screaming power inside him…

_I should have learned this. I should have been taught. How could they ever think they could trap me into serving the cult of the Light Side and the petty squabbles of the bloated Republic? By telling me the Skywalkers had always done it? Vader is just as much my birthright as the Jedi and the royal house of Alderaan, and just as much a Skywalker. Were they afraid because I was so much stronger? Were they afraid that I would see farther? They tricked me into believing them. They tricked me into trusting them. But now I know so much more – I know what they were hiding. They were hiding_ ME.

As Kylo seethed, the glow of the carvings continued to spread. And this time, unlike those in the hall, they didn’t spread up but out and away, the glow trailing ahead of him like the arm of a galaxy. He moved forward, locking his steps onto the glow in case he lost it; this time, he seemed to make progess. The hall’s walls moved by, and as the scarlet light ran past and illuminated them, he saw they were studded with alcoves – some with drifts of stray ash, a few broken as if something within them had been smashed and the wall caught in the crossfire, and one with some kind of detritus in it. He stopped to examine this one, but it was just metal shards, too small to identify their parent. _Polished, though. Made, not natural – something valuable Grandfather put on display. Finally, I’m in the right place._

The glow halted abruptly at the far end of the corridor, hesitated long enough to condense into a solid glare, and then began creeping upwards as if it was hot red blood filling an invisible chalice. Kylo stepped forward, advancing his saber for more light, and saw that the light was actually sliding up around the outside of a pitch-black ball taller than a being. _A hyperbaric chamber._

He felt a slice of unease inside him – Luke didn’t like to describe his final encounter with Lord Vader, but once he had finally acquiesced to his duties to his nephew and given him a complete account. _My father –_ Luke never referred to Lord Vader by his names; Kylo guessed that there were too many stories attached to any of Vader’s pseudonyms – _my father was burned so badly that he never healed. Sometimes I think his suit made sure of it._

Kylo was under his uncle’s tutelage at the Jedi Academy by that time, with access to the holonet strictly supervised, and it took him several days before he was sure no one would sense him sneaking into his uncle’s private chamber. But one day he’d finally been sure Luke was off-planet, and he’d immediately broken into his uncle’s rooms and logged onto the holonet, calling up all the information on human burn victims he could find – beginning with pictures.

_Luke should have told me,_ Kylo thought again, staring at the hyperbaric chamber. _I should have known._

_You were never truly avenged._

The chamber was ringed by consoles, and he focussed on these, finding the switch for one and watching the linked systems boot up around him. _These are all medical. Is this just a treatment room?_ He crumpled his features, fighting to keep his mind clear against the frustration. _No – why would there be display cases in a medbay? This was something more. His space._ _A sleeping chamber?_ Kylo glanced back to the hyperbaric chamber. _Did he… sleep in there?_

He turned back to the medical displays with new eyes; one console, more prominent than the rest, had a hand-sized smear of grease on it. He pressed his glove against it, and a blast of old air and decomposed gases slapped his cloak against his legs. The hyperbaric chamber shuddered, then split, the top of it lifting away into the shadows and the remaining half balancing on its end like a cradle, glowing red. Rising from the pool of light was a cot – _more like a stretcher –_ quilted in black, bristling with wires.

The Force’s whispers burst out of the crack he’d trapped them in, rising to a shout as the red glow blew into a glare, and Kylo reeled backward from both, slamming into the console behind him.

This _is your birthright. Pain and suffering distilled into power, forged in fire and blood. We are all born in our mother’s blood but you’ve been reborn in your father’s, and it’s only one more step to do it again in your grandfather’s. The most powerful Force user the galaxy has ever known, and his blood can be yours – all you have to do is let me run unchecked through you. You know you want the pain – you live on it. Imagine the power if it wasn’t just your pain, but_ others’-

Kylo stood and stepped forward to run his hand along the surface of the cot. It was crusted with steam and dried minerals which shattered under his touch. He glanced down to the headrest – a cupped plastic neckbrace; Vader’s scalp must have been too raw to touch any surface – and noticed that the crust on it was also broken. And swiped away, as if something had been snatched off it. _Someone else –_

He snarled, snatching his hand back into a fist, and shot out his saber blade as he turned and ran from the cluster of consoles and chamber. A display cracked and the chamber half shuddered, and as Kylo Ren pounded back down the corridor towards the hall, the lid of the hyperbaric chamber loosened, jerked for an instant on a length of cable, and then plummeted, smashing against its lower half and collapsing into it, both crushed together forever like a child’s toy when its owner has tired of it. The red glow of the Sith carvings died too.

* * *

The troopers’ weapons jerked up as Lord Ren ran back into the hall and skidded to a stop in the centre of it.

‘My Lord?’ Sarge inquired, attempting to keep the dread out of his voice even though he knew Ren could sense it.

‘Did you find anything?’ Ren snapped, his helmet twitched around as he scanned the hall.

‘No, my Lord. No survivors.’ A little confused, Sarge gestured at the empty heaps of debris heaving up across the floor. Some of the troopers were kicking gingerly through them.

‘And no strays,’ Scout added from one of the two unexplored exits. ‘We’ve got a systems core over here – shield generators, power facilities, cooling systems, some storage – and the other exit is empty living quarters. Small, probably soldier barracks or servants. Some service areas, I think, but the equipment’s smashed.’

‘Stripped?’ Ren pressed aggressively. Scout, with a spike of fear, nodded. He turned his glare to Slicer.

‘Scans?’

‘No other significant life forms,’ the tech said, raising his wrist computer’s screen to prove it. ‘These creatures probably moved in here after- uh, after it was abandoned. They’re called Samalessas, according to our databases -- local, usually dig their own caves in the obsidian, so this would have been perfect for –‘

‘You’re saying this was the only nest.’ Ren glared up at the nave, scoured of its nest save for the melted, glowing masses of unopened cocoons.

‘Yessir.’

‘Well, then.’ Inside his helmet, Kylo closed his eyes. The heat of the Force swelled inside him again and he swept it upwards, dragging himself with it.

The troopers stopped in their tracks and gaped as Lord Ren rose, far up into the shadows, with nothing beneath his feet but the sparks trailed by his lightsaber.

‘Why do we even _need_ jetpack stormtroopers?’ Heavy muttered to Sniper.

‘How many times does Sarge need to say ‘radio silence’?’ Slicer said pointedly.

‘ _Slicer,_ ’ Sarge growled.

‘What?’

‘ _Please,_ ’ Fire groaned. ‘Please don’t.’

Kylo blotted their small minds out as he always did, letting them drop down and shrink beneath him like the receding of a planet’s surface. He settled into the same sense of space he used for piloting, and rose steadily on course and cleanly through the jagged glass edges of the broken obsidian ribs. They were crusted with gore, now; as he passed he could see that the pus of the creatures’ insides had crystallised.

Kylo looked from the walls to the fused cocoons at the nave’s apex and finally came to a halt close enough to see them clearly. The cocoons’ thick, gelatinous surfaces were pitted and clogged where insects had bored into them and drowned in the mucus. Their skins were thin in some places, giving them a mottled appearance from barely-visible form of the Samalessa curled inside. They radiated a fatal heat, so strong the air shimmered and made the unborn look like they were shifting awake. But Kylo knew they couldn’t still be alive; the choking, salty smell of curdled death was strong, and too familiar to mistake.

He decided to ignore the sealed cocoons and slid across to the hub of broken eggs the creatures had attacked them from. Up close, he realised that they had been torn open for a long time – months, at least – in spite of the fresh, dripping placentas sagging out of them. _These aren’t cocoons – they’re detached wombs! And they were_ nesting _in them! They never left --_ He felt nauseated, the stinking heat rising beneath his mask… But he pushed it down again, concentrating on the hot flush of the Force underneath him.

Some showed recent breaks along their edges, doubtless where his saber had torn them; a few had the ashy tissue of their nest sealed against the mucas of their sides, the edges drifting free in Kylo’s wake. But they all showed an irregular darkness packed up against their innermost side. Kylo stuck his saber inside for light. More crystallised body fluids – saliva? -- but carefully shaped this time, with things casually pressed into it. _A lightpen, a metal emitter, some obsidian, a knife... They collected things! I knew it!_

He smashed his fist into the crystal, shattering the knot of the Samalessa’s hoard and grabbing up the falling items. He sorted through them with his eyes for a moment – _nothing_ – then dropped them and did the same with the next womb. And the next. And the next.

The troopers below dodged, ducked, and eventually flattened themselves against the walls as Lord Ren worked with increasing violence through all twelve of the open wombs. Finally, reaching the last without success, he let out a roar and whirled in midair, swinging dangerously as he hacked at the intact wombs with his saber.

‘There’s nothing _here!_ ’

Steaming slop, stinking with heat and melting collagen, fell like a rain of lava. The troopers, hunched out of the way, managed to avoid the worst of it, but the crystallised saliva strands of the hoards were weightless and sliced like fiber plastisteel, and spun downwards to tear their plate. Heavy had to brush it off her lighter-armoured squadmates with her shock-proof gauntlets, and wadded it into a bundle which Fire quickly melted down with a burst from her flamethrower.

Kylo ignored the stormtroopers beneath. Finally frustrated even of objects to destroy, he let the Force go and dropped from the full height of the ceiling. He landed hard, his knee and fists slamming down to catch his momentum and the obsidian cracking beneath him. His back heaved. When he finally removed his knuckles from the black glass of the floor, they cracked audibly, and left puddles of blood behind.

The squad stopped and stared at him. Sarge stiffened against Lord Ren’s mood shift.

But the performance seemed to have broken Ren’s temper rather than worsened it. He levelled himself up and, for the first time, looked his sergeant in the eye.

‘This was a trap.’

‘Sir?’ Sarge asked, unsure what Lord Ren wanted from him. ‘They were animals-‘

‘Animals don’t operate pressure plates under a moat of lava,’ Ren replied. Sarge relaxed slightly; the Supreme Leader seemed to be thinking out loud rather than teaching him a lesson. ‘Only a Force user could do that. And there’s only one Force user – one who’s always turned my own family against me-’

‘The girl,’ Slicer murmured.

_No. Rey doesn’t hate me,_ Kylo thought, and was surprised by the thought.

‘ _No,_ ’ he snapped at the unfortunate trooper. ‘ _Luke Skywalker_.’

No one dared comment this time. Ren continued, pointing his saber at the floor of the hall, now thick with the sludge of bodies.

‘He knew I would come here one day,’ he said. ‘He knew it was my birthright – that this is _my_ fortress. And he violated it, he filled it with creatures to destroy me, and he stole what Darth Vader left here for me -- his true heir.’

‘What?’ Fire asked, hypnotised.

Kylo clenched his fist. _I don’t know!_

‘Something,’ he said. ‘Something which helped Vader become the most powerful wielder of the Force in his generation. Something which will make me a master of the Force. The _sole_ master.’

His vehemence shivered through him, disturbing the ash on the foor into eddies that whispered around the troopers’ legs. They stiffened, bearing up underneath his palpable anger and suffocating atmosphere.

Lord Ren lowered the brow of his mask. ‘Prepare my ship.’

‘Sir!’ Scout squeaked, and fled. The rest of the squad, unwilling to show such willingness to leave the Supreme Leader’s presence, clumped into formation and trailed out after her.

Kylo Ren turned and, striking the tip of his lightsaber along the dark floor, managed to re-ignite the Sith script for one last, futile study.

_There’s no one to teach it to me, now,_ he thought, his reason clouding with fury. _And now I’ll make sure there will never be anyone_ ever again _._

He raised his saber.

* * *

‘Oh, thank frak, the lava’s still upright,’ Heavy said, her relief palpable even through the thin broadcast from her comm. ‘I was afraid Slicer’d have to rig something with the shield generator and I _know_ before he’d have managed it Lord Ren would’ve -‘

‘ _Now_ you respect my skills,’ Slicer cut her off acidly. ‘When you realise how they benefit you.’

‘Shut up and keep moving,’ Scout ordered them. The rest of them looked at her, surprised – she was already only a small form pelting dangerously across the slick glass path between the walls of magma.

‘I give the orders here, Scout!’ Sarge snapped, starting forward.

A burst of static. Slicer glanced down at his wrist computer. _She’s cut off Lord Ren’s channel?_

‘Scout, wha-‘ he began.

‘Do you want to get out of here alive?’ Scout’s voice demanded. Far ahead, her form stopped on the other side of the moat and wheeled to face them.

‘Were we not going to?’ Heavy asked doubtfully.

Sniper caught on first. ‘Scout. _What did you do_?’

‘What?’ Fire’s voice was scared in the mic, and she slipped on the splintered obsidian ground; Heavy caught her arm before she could fall into the fire. ‘Thank you – but -- Scout, _what did you do?_ ’

‘Get on the ship and I’ll tell you.’ Scout slung her rifle over her back and burst into a run.

‘ _Scout!_ ’ Sarge roared, voice splitting the comm. He broke off after her, Slicer panting on his heels. ‘You’re looking down the barrel of sanitation duty for a _year_!’

‘We’re _already_ looking down a barrel! Now I’ve got a way out and I’m _taking_ it, and if I have to bring the rest of you at gunpoint, _I_ _will._ ’

‘What way?’ Heavy said, trying to sort through the situation. ‘What way could there possibly be? We can’t just _run_ … can we?’

‘You’re making a group decision, here, Scout,’ Sarge said. His voice was a little fainter now. ‘I’m the only one who can that! And _I_ say… we _stay._ ’

Scout was already around the edge of their sight, around a hill of debris; Sarge and Slicer pushed after her, while the rest struggled behind with their bulky equipment. But even out of sight, and over the spit and gush of the glowing lava fields around them, they could hear the dropship’s engines fire up.

‘Where is there to go, Scout?’ Sniper asked, her voice low and choppy in the mic. She dropped back, eyes on the still-shaky Fire. ‘The First Order owns the galaxy. They own the Outer Rim. They own the Uncharted Regions. And they haven’t left anything of the Republic behind. You can drag us along at gunpoint if you want, but there’s nowhere to go. You’re as good as killing us right now.’

Heavy slugged Sniper in the shoulder with the butt of her gun. ‘I’m sick of your optimism, you know that?’

Sniper stopped completely. ‘If you follow her, you’re going to get yourself killed.’

‘I’ve never been killed before,’ Heavy said. ‘Heck, I’ve never been kidnapped before. What’s say we go for a double-header on new adventures, huh? My treat.’

Sniper stiffened. Then her shoulders slumped. ‘…Frak it. He’ll kill us even if we _do_ go back now.’

Fire squeaked into her mic and began to hustle. Slicer, on the other hand, stopped dead. Fire nearly cannoned into him, and froze, like a wild animal at a predator.

‘He won’t,’ Slicer said. ‘He wouldn’t.’

‘You’re joking, right?’ Heavy said.

‘He’s not joking,’ Sniper said, crossing her arms. ‘He’s just convinced himself that Supreme Leader Ren _likes_ him.’

‘ _You’re_ joking,’ Heavy told her. ‘ _Nobody_ likes Slicer.’

‘ _Shut up!_ ’ Slicer yelled. He whirled on them, snapping up his rifle. Sarge, just ahead, turned back in time to see the tech advance on Heavy and Sniper. Fire took the advantage and fled ahead.

‘Slicer!’ The sergeant unsnapped his sidearm holster. ‘Put the rifle down.’

‘You gave up your command when you didn’t stop Scout, Sarge,’ Slicer said. ‘And I’m next in the ranks. _I’m_ the leader here now, by _right._ ’

‘She has our dropship,’ Sarge replied dully. His palm was on his gun butt. ‘I can’t drag it back down here, son.’

‘She won’t take off without us and you know it,’ Slicer snapped. ‘She wants to _save us._ From the First Order! It’s a joke! Everyone knows the rest of the galaxy is a lawless hellhole that can’t scrape up enough trade to buy a tunic to cover its own ass. I’m not getting dragged down into that in the name of _friendship_ or _camaraderie_ or whatever your excuse for mutiny is, and I’m not going to let you _let her._ ’

Heavy shift her gun enough to raise a hand soothingly. ‘Hey –‘

Sniper raised his rifle and she lowered her chin, willing him to see her eyes through their visors.

‘Scout’s making a choice,’ she told him. ‘You can’t stop people from making choices, no matter what rank you are. But she’s not making yours for you.’

‘She is! She’s making me look like a traitor! I’m not like the rest of you _weaklings_!’

‘You can go back –‘

Slicer hesitated; they could all hear him draw in an uncertain breath into the comm.

Then a shock of wind smashed into them all, and the hot glow of the lava was blasted away by the cold white lights of the dropship as it rose into view. It banked awkwardly over the hill of debris between them, sliding over them and hovering.

Heavy stumbled back against the wind, overbalanced with her gun, and knocked Sniper sprawling. Sniper’s long rifle landed on the charcoal-padded beach with a _fumph_ , vanishing instantly beneath the ash. Its owner strugged on the ground, clawing to find firm purchase to lever herself back up.

Slicer raised his gun, sighting. ‘Don’t move!’

‘I’m sinking, you idiot!’ Sniper snarled, forgetting self-preservation for rage at the boy she’d trained with ever since they could remember, now unfamiliar and unpredictable and frightening.

‘No you’re not! You’re stalling!’

‘Oh, for the love of-!‘

‘I’ve got her, I’ve got her!’ Heavy inched for the fallen trooper, but Slicer’s gun jerked.

‘Don’t touch her!’

‘I thought you wanted her standing!’

‘I want everyone to stop what they’re doing and go back to Lord Ren!’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ Sarge said. He was easing closer to Slicer’s back, footfalls silent in the lava’s roar and the ash. ‘He knows by now.’

‘No! Scout cut the comms. We can still go back!’

‘You know that doesn’t matter. He _always_ knows,’ Sarge said. His voice was low. His gun was in his hand. ‘I’ve been with Lord Ren for five years. I know everyone he’s ever killed – but he knows every thought you’ve ever had.’

Something about this cut Slicer to the bone and, shaking, he turned on his sergeant with the rifle.

‘No!’ he yelled. ‘He wouldn’t –‘

‘He wouldn’t forgive you if he could read your thoughts?’ Sarge finished. He didn’t bother hiding his sidearm now; he straightened, abandoning the ingrained battle stance into a fresh, defiant one. His visor was level; his chin was up; his gun was light and balanced in his hand. ‘We’ve watched Lord Ren – we’ve _helped him_ kill, for a long time. Not just these dumb animals in the guts of their own home, but _people._ And we’ve found excuses for it. It’s all for the Order, right? It’s all for the cause? But Lord Ren doesn’t need excuses. He knows that he’s killing and there’s a place inside him where he’s always remembering that, because he _likes it._ And Lord Ren doesn’t need to forgive, either. He doesn’t forgive us for what we think. He remembers it. Because it reminds him that he _can_ read our thoughts, which makes him better than us. And he _loves_ – he _needs_ to be better than us. And when he runs out of animals to kill, he’s going to kill us. Killing is what he likes, Slicer. Killing makes him better than the dumb animals, and better than us. All I’ve done for the past five years is feed him dumb animals to stop him from killing us.’ The sergeant raised his gun. ‘And I’m not going to let you feed my squad to him. Once he starts, he’s going to eat the whole First Order.’

Slicer tossed his head, trying to shake off the words, and Sarge’s steady hand followed his helmet in perfect aim –

And Sniper, finally getting her feet under her, leapt at Slicer’s back, and her cocked elbow cannoned into his helmet.

The tech trooper crumpled, landing with undeserved softness in the pillowy ash.

‘ _Aaaaargh!_ ’ Sniper roared down at his unconscious form.

‘Snipes,’ Heavy said.

‘ _I was on the ground,_ ’ Sniper shouted. She flung herself down to her knees and began scrabbling in the charcoal, unearthing her long rifle. ‘ _I was clearly incapacitated on the ground._ What is it about holding a gun that _always_ makes you think you’re smarter than everyone else?!’

‘Snipes,’ Heavy said, slightly more urgently.

‘ _I know!_ ’ Sniper straightened, long rifle braced on the ground, and took a deep, calming breath. Then she coughed, bashing at her helmet’s clogged air filtre. Heavy banged helpfully on her back, and she hung balefully onto the rifle for support. ‘…Thank you.’

‘Thank me when we’re off this rock,’ Heavy told her.

‘I’ll thank you _both_ to pick Slicer up or we’ll never get that far,’ Sarge snapped.

Sniper sucked in another vengeful breath, but Heavy punched her again. ‘Okay!’ the gunner said cheerfully.

The dropship hovered lower, its access ramp extending. Fire, already onboard, hung onto the doorframe.

‘Come on!’ she shouted at the squad below. ‘Scout’s not very good at this!’

‘Which is why _I’m_ in charge, you idiots!’ Sarge yelled back. ‘Fire, drop a cargo net or some other line! Heavy, Sniper, get him over here –‘

Between the four of them and some equipment, they managed to pull the unconscious Slicer onboard. Sniper sated herself by stripping his body of every scrap of weaponry, and his equipment for good measure, while Heavy set about restraining him in the most comfortable position she could.

‘What happened to him?’ Fire whispered, hanging onto a ready strap.

‘Kylo Ren doesn’t agree with anyone,’ Heavy chuckled.

‘You can’t say that!’ Fire protested. ‘He can hear us! He – oh. He could probably use the Force to pull us out of orbit right now! I don’t know how we could ever –‘

‘Who cares how magical he is?’ Sniper growled, straightening from her awkward crouch. ‘He’s clearly a frakking idiot. Giving your soldiers the keys to the ship and then dropping a ceiling on them _for fun_? Spoiled sith motherfrakker handed god-powers and didn’t have the brains do a damn thing with them. _I swear to frak._ ’

Heavy laughed, yanked off Sniper’s helmet, and kissed her.

* * *

Sarge left the remains of his squad in the hold and slid into the cockpit. Scout was eyeing the controls gingerly, and his eye followed hers; the autopilot for takeoff and the rate of climb was on, but the ship’s level and angle had been manual.

‘Good work,’ he said. She looked at him; she’d removed her helmet, and the tight brunette curls of her natural hair sprang away from her thin-nosed, lean-jawed dark face in all directions. ‘The angle of ascent is just steep enough for us not to skip off the atmosphere, without knocking us off our feet.’

‘It’s been a long time since I flew you,’ she said, gripping the yoke more firmly. ‘You know I always fly my own solo missions, right?’

‘Oh,’ her sergeant said. ‘Of course you would.’ He moved away from her and took the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Solo missions. No wonder you got this into your head. You’ve seen the rest of the galaxy.’

She tightened her lips. ‘You don’t think it’s a hellhole?’

‘Oh, it is.’ A pause. ‘But we’re dead, anyway. There’s no choice now.’

‘I didn’t want to leave you all.’ Scout’s voice broke. ‘—with no choice. Frak. I screwed up.’

The sergeant was silent. Scout squeezed her eyes shut and took a heavy breath.

‘I’d been thinking about it a long time. I had a plan.’

‘This couldn’t have been it.’

‘It wasn’t!’ Scout coughed; it was almost a laugh. ‘I had a good plan. Use my solo missions to skim money off locals, snug it away, then one day just go AWOL and buy a new life – it had to work. Money always works, right?’

Sarge sighed. ‘I’ve heard that one before.’

‘Finn did it!’

‘FN-2187 had a gun and the Resistance’s best pilot with him,’ the sergeant snapped, then caught himself, remembering they were in the midst of their own escape. ‘Uh –‘

‘Well, we did it anyway,’ Scout cut in. ‘I saw the chance for me _and_ the rest of you. We’re free now. I mean, you can go back if you want – _Slicer_ can go back, if he wants – but you’re free to do _anything._ ’

The sergeant was shaking his head. It was a futile gesture; it was more as though his head was too heavy, and he wasn’t strong enough to stop the swing. ‘There are always consequences, Scout.’

‘Can’t you just – _enjoy_ it? For one minute? Please!’

‘I just – I don’t want you to be disappointed.’ Sarge pulled off his helmet and looked her in the eye. He was an older man, with thin pale hair, plush cheeks streaked with a fading tan, a weak chin under a wide mouth, and unexpectedly magnetic, creased green eyes. ‘First Order troopers don’t have pasts. But now – Look. I used to live out there.’ He half-lifted a hand towards the stars streaking past the cockpit. ‘It was an unremarkable life. I don’t miss it. Don’t get me wrong, I missed a lot of things, but not who I used to be. But there’s no such thing as a clean break, Scout. In one way or another, you’ll never be done with the First Order.’

Scout stared at him. Her jaw set. ‘Okay. Maybe not. But I’m done living under them.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll just have to deal with the rest when it comes.’

Sarge looked away. He’d thought about this moment for years – freedom, the end of the First Order, one way or another – and he willed himself to feel the exhileration, the high he knew Scout and the other troopers were riding. But it was on the other side of the wall inside of him. The optimism hit it and fell away like bullets flattening against his armour; he could almost hear the empty _clongs_ over Scout’s heroic proclamations. He felt the wall rock, lean, and then crash over him like a wave breaking from behind a dam, and his brain sagged as despair swamped him, sucking him down into the fear at its dregs. It was too familiar -- the only feeling that felt real anymore. This escape? It couldn’t be real. How could it, when he couldn’t feel it? The only thing he knew was real anymore was that he was a lumbering monster of stitched-together failures, a creature reduced to flushing out fresh victims for Lord Ren’s hunger, something that threw bodies in front of his own useless life. He shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t appreciate it, let alone deserve it. He couldn’t escape anything before, and this escape was only another failure to add to his load.

‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Sir?’

‘I’m not your ‘sir’ anymore,’ he said, with enough brutality that he hoped she’d never ask again. ‘This is your mission. Come to think of it, this isn’t a mission, either. It’s just you, holding the yoke of a starship, isn’t it? So what happens now, Scout?’

Scout smiled, and yanked something out of her utility belt. It was crusted with the same crystallised saliva they’d watched Ren smash out of the Samalessa wombs and rain down on their heads – along with whatever it had contained.

‘When opportunity drops in your lap, you take it.’ She tilted her wrist, and the red and yellow lights of the console slid along the jagged blade of something so misshapen with age and crusting it was barely recognisable as a dagger. Something glinted beneath the filth; Sarge squinted. _Writing?_

‘Or in this case – you take whatever Kylo Ren wanted at the other end of these coordinates.’


	5. Chapter 5

The durasteel gangplank landed with a comic _fumpf_ in the soft charcoal of the Mustafar beach – a far cry from the _clash!_ which usually heralded the heavy lockstep of a highly-trained stormtrooper platoon. But the humorous effect was more than made up for by the angry red glow of the lava rivers flooding past the shuttle, in a haze which made their speed seem dizzying. Billows of black ash gathered to darken the scene, then thrust up into the hold, and the shadow resolved itself into the form of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, his cracked mask and war-torn cloak streaked with black dust and broken obsidian. He was shaking with rage, and the movement made something caked across his quilted armour – crystallised fluids? Something he’d killed? – catch the light of the shuttle’s consoles. He positively gleamed with fury, his size and rage dominating the tight space like a black, sucking hole of hatred.

_Typical,_ Grand Admiral Armitage Hux thought with disgust.

‘Did you lose something?’ he inquired, standing astride the gangplank to force Kylo Ren to acknowledge him.

Ren snarled at him, and tried to butt his shoulder out of his way; but Hux slid aside, used to Ren’s physical reprimands.

‘I ask because I wish to know if you have any orders to address this situation,’ he continued smoothly. ‘As Supreme Leader, I’m sure you tolerate no insult.’

Ren stopped in the doorway, then turned back on his Grand Admiral. Hux smirked at him.

‘I tolerate the millions of fools under my command,’ Ren said, his mask deepening his voice. ‘Perhaps you should ask yourself how much longer I’ll do so.’

_Every hour,_ Hux thought. ‘Do not threaten me, Ren,’ he said. ‘Even if you think the First Order is a pack of fools, _I’m_ the one who is the true leader here.’

‘And what does that say about you?’

‘It says that you can’t control even a so-called pack of fools so you have me do it for you!’

Ren put a foot out, widening his stance and stretching his shoulders back to loom at the leaner man.

‘You are _not_ the Supreme Leader,’ he said – _too quickly,_ Hux thought with satisfaction. ‘I have events in motion which you cannot even imagine.’

‘No,’ Hux said, looking meaningfully down the gangplank at the charcoal beach where the Supreme Leader had been betrayed and marooned by six petty stormtroopers. ‘I could never have imagined this.’

Ren yanked off his helmet, narrowly missing the end of Hux’s chin, and pushed his wild-eyed, sticky face into his Grand Admiral’s.

‘This mission was a success,’ he spat. ‘Unlike yours.’

‘ _My_ mission?’

‘Running the First Order?’

‘How have I failed in that?’ Hux’s tone was almost amused. ‘The Republic has been shattered, their Resistance crushed, and their legendary Luke Skywalker is dead. The First Order could not have performed more ably.’

Ren coughed, spitting up ash-stained mucus but covering with a chuckle. ‘You think _you_ killed a Jedi?’

Hux shifted his ground. ‘The Order was essential to the overall scheme.’

‘The Order has no place for the Force,’ Ren said, half to himself. ‘You’ll never kill a Force user if you don’t believe in the Force itself.’

_Oh, I believe in it now,_ Hux thought bitterly. _I just don’t have any respect for something that doesn’t have any respect for_ me. ‘I believe in my men.’

‘Isn’t that the same as believing in yourself, Grand Admiral?’ Ren said. Hux flinched, and he sneered. ‘I know you think you’re my equal. But you’re my subordinate. Even when you had Snoke to hide behind, you still didn’t have enough power to overthrow me. And you never will.’ Ren stepped back, generously granting his Grand Admiral his personal space as a sop to his humiliation. ‘You and your precious First Order were born to live beneath me, Hux. So you might as well enjoy what you have.’

Hux clenched his teeth, willing himself to absorb the remark. Kylo Ren, satisfied that he’d once again put his Grand Admiral in his place, replaced his helmet and exited the hold. The moment he’d left, Hux whirled and slammed the hatch release. It _banged_ so loudly that fear sliced through him – _I hope Ren didn’t hear that display of temper_ – but then the gangplank began grinding back up into position, and he consoled himself that the noise would be written off as part of takeoff.

He sat back against the edge of an ammunition crate, willing his mind to smooth down into authoritative calm. And after a few moments, it did. After all, he’d had a lifetime to learn that rebellious thoughts inevitably showed on his face, and to cultivate the ability to repress his plotting – his entire internal dialogue -- in public. It was a skill which, he guessed, was probably what had allowed him to survive so long opposite the mind-reading of Kylo Ren and Snoke. Hux’s disgust with those he percieved as his inferiors was, unfortunately, much harder to disguise, but the First Order bred competition rather than camaraderie, and most people wrote off these slips as ambition rather than traitorousness.

_I am no traitor,_ Hux thought venomously. It was true. He didn’t follow this train of thought – _not while I’m on the same shuttle as Kylo Ren_ – but he didn’t need to; it was one which he chewed over many times a day. _He was the one who killed Snoke. Not because Snoke was on my side, but because he wanted to be Supreme Leader._ That’s _a traitor. But he’s lying to himself if he thinks he did it alone. He was Snoke’s favourite, not I – and then that_ girl _helped Ren kill him. And now he can’t even be Supreme Leader without my help? No, someone has held Ren’s hand every step of the way. He’s just so self-centred he can’t see anyone else as real next to him._ _And that’s why he’ll underestimate anyone else…_

Hux stood, flicking back the folds of his greatcoat into their proper fall, and cast a sharp look around the hold. There was little to see – some stray obsidian on the floor, a thin coating of ash over everything – and he frowned slightly. Then he crossed to the forward door and left.

* * *

‘Grand Admiral, the Supreme Leader has summoned a meeting of the generals,’ Mitaka said, appearing at Hux’s elbow.

‘I know,’ Hux said, setting a brisk pace for the upper deck of the Finaliser. ‘That’s why I had to cut my meeting with Training short. You’ll need to collect the rest of their presentation and forward it to my datapad.’

‘Yes, Grand Admiral,’ his aide-de-camp said, making a note. ‘I’ve pushed your next meeting with the quartermaster off an hour to make time for the Supreme Leader.’

‘Make it an hour and a half. I’ll need time to address whatever he brings up.’

‘Sir.’ Mitaka hesitated. He knew Hux required strict adherence to First Order hierarchy and protocol, but he also knew that Hux valued being the first apprised of any complication. ‘Is there something I should be attending to?’

‘Be clearer.’ Hux rounded a corner and Mitaka hurried to keep up.

‘The Supreme Leader just returned a few hours ago.’

_You’re right,_ Hux thought tolerantly. _It’s not like Ren to be so attentive to his duties._ ‘Perhaps that is what the meeting is about, Lieutenant.’

Mitaka flushed. Hux caught this out of the corner of his eye and realised. _He’s talking about the deserters._

Hux stopped and looked directly at his lieutenant.

‘Has the pilot been spreading rumours?’ he asked.

Mitaka shook his head. ‘Ordnance noticed they hadn’t checked their equipment back in. Quarters confirmed they weren’t there, either.’

Hux made a mental note that safeguards meant to track loiterers were a problem when it came to suppressing news of deserters. _There shouldn’t still be holes in the organisation I need to fix – but then, this isn’t supposed to happen. Ren’s leadership is anything but!_ ‘Try to trace the story and suppress it as much as possible.’ He reconsidered. ‘Wait until after this meeting with the Supreme Leader – he may have a particular explanation he wishes to use.’ What he meant was ‘a particular cover story’ but he knew Mitaka would take him at his word. ‘Have you found out what his Knights are doing yet?’

Mitaka shook his head imperceptibly. _No doubt because he’s had no success for three weeks. Do I have to do everything?_

‘They don’t have any regulation weapons, so they wouldn’t go through Ordnance,’ Hux said, thinking aloud. ‘Their rooms adjoin the Supreme Leader’s, so Quarters wouldn’t have direct oversight –‘

‘Just Sanitation,’ Mitaka confirmed. ‘And there’s nothing in there. It’s like they’re ghosts.’

_Or monks in the religion of Kylo Ren._ Hux suppressed an irritated snort. ‘We’ll have to trace their ship. The next time they check in here, use the hyperspace tracker.’

‘That’s a bridge system!’ Mitaka said, shocked. ‘You’d be broadcasting it to everyone on board!’

_By that time it won’t matter._ ‘Then confirm with me first,’ Hux said, to calm his lieutenant. ‘Now go pull the report for my quartermaster meeting and make a précis; it won’t be as long as it usually is and I don’t want to waste time.’

‘Sir.’

Hux left Mitaka behind. The conference room for senior officers was at the intersection of two of the largest, busiest corridors on the bridge level. He picked his way through the usual gaggle of mouse droids -- there was a bug in their programming which occasionally made them try to deliver their dataloads to the nearest high-ranking officer ( _him)_ rather than their designees, and for some reason his orders to repair this kept getting bounced around – and entered.

_Of course everyone else is already here._ Hux was always on time, but Kylo Ren had figured this out long ago, and usually devoted some of his precious time as Supreme Leader to outmaneouvering Hux’s strict adherence to schedule. And now eight generals and one Ren were staring at him.

Hux took a moment to straighten his left cuff before he set off leisurely across the length of the chamber, taking care that his disdain was shown to best advantage by the long, low window behind him and its dramatic view of the Finaliser’s lines plummeting to the hanger bays below. As he knew it would, his slow pace sapped Ren’s smugness, and the Supreme Leader didn’t even wait for Hux to settle in the chair at his right before snapping, ‘Finally. Now, explain to me why Training hasn’t spent the last year figuring out how to stop your troopers from deserting?’

_I see. No cover story, then. Just blaming me._ Hux clenched his teeth so hard he could feel the blood knifing through the muscle on the line of his jaw. ‘Supreme Leader. Training has not apprised you of its new developments because Training reports to _me._ To spare your valuable time,’ he added, softening his aggressiveness; he didn’t want to get into a power struggle with Ren today. _Again._ _The last thing I need right now is for Ren to stalk off in a huff and shut himself away to meditate for the next two days._

‘So runaway stormtroopers are a secret between you and Training?’

‘ _So,_ ’ Hux stressed the word to emphasise Ren’s inappropriate casualness, ‘You may be unaware of our focus on new recruitment-based training. We’ve made great strides.’

This kind of teasing phrase would usually be enough to distract Ren from whatever diatribe he was delivering, but apparently being marooned on his favourite grampa’s lava planet by six nobodies weighed on his mind.

‘I hope your new training is as good as you say, since your old regimen isn’t working. If anything, you’re breeding Resistance spies.’

One of the generals took an audible breath. Hux began to flush in anger. ‘A few rebels who came through my training don’t mean I’m a traitor! We have millions in service, a testament to the power of the Order and its methods. These aren’t a systematic failure, they’re outliers – it’s statistically impossible to run any system without some.’

‘You mean you _expected_ them?’

Hux gulped, pushing down a spike of real panic. ‘We have a statistically optimal training regimen, and we are _expanding_ our operations, not _repairing_ them.’

‘You refuse to admit they need repairing?’ Ren planted a hand on the table and leaned over the seated Hux.

‘Statistically-‘

‘ _Pryde._ ’ Ren’s helmet whipped around. An older man, with a long, space-bleached face splotched with red, small hard eyes, and an aristocratically receding chin, stiffened in excitement. ‘You are now in charge of Training and Recruitment. Don’t let this happen again.’

‘Supreme Leader.’ General Enric Pryde dipped a shoulder in a seated bow. ‘I will not disappoint you.’

Hux sat, stunned out of words. _I’ve lost it._ Then he hardened his face.

‘General Pryde,’ he said, commandingly. ‘As your Grand Admiral, I expect you to report to me on your efforts in your new assignment. Doubtless you will want to know the details of Training and Recruitment’s recent research.’

This was technically true, and, as Hux had calculated, Ren said nothing to suggest otherwise. _He wants to watch us fight over the bone._

‘Perhaps you require assistance when you take on new posts, Grand Admiral,’ General Pryde said. ‘I do not.’ He gave the half-bow to Hux this time, to disguise the sarcasm – and, since no one was fooled, this in fact only doubled it.

‘You say this ignorant of the details of my experiments,’ Hux retorted. ‘I hope you are not too proud to renege on your overconfidence when confronted with such complexity. Efficiency should not be stunted because of your pride.’

Pryde’s eyes narrowed at the unsubtle pun, and Hux permitted himself a small smirk; _it was far from real wit, but it’s clearly an old irritation._ ‘It is not overconfidence if it is the truth.’

‘Ah,’ said Hux. ‘Once again you seem to believe you can see into my mind? I would not trespass on Supreme Leader Ren’s territory if I were you.’

‘Perhaps you should inform the General _now,_ ’ Ren suggested, with the an edge of lasciviousness. _Waggling the bone out of reach._ ‘You were about to brief us on it to cover up your own inadequacies, weren’t you?’

Hux’s lip curled; he had successfully put Pryde down but now Ren was propping him back up again. _Very well. Perhaps telling them is for the best – right now, anyway._

He snapped his datapad flat against the table and brought up a rotating hologram of a trooper’s helmet.

‘Our current recruitment is child- and ideals-based,’ he said. ‘Children are easily malleable, both mentally and physically, and, as the old Imperial clones and privates have been phased out, they form the backbone of our junior enlisted and NCOs today. The trade-off is years – years of their own training and growth, but also years of constant supervision and indoctrination from _our_ people.

‘Adult recruits, on the other hand, dedicate themselves to us for many reasons, but two overwhelm the others: stability and ideals. Unfortunately, the prediction models for ideals-based recruiting are relatively unsuccessful; full loyalty to the Order requires complete subscription to our tenets, and it is difficult to calculate which minds -- aside from the usual fringe elements -- are open to such complete reprogramming.’

‘It would seem there are many areas in need of improvement,’ Ren said. Hux struggled to keep his attention on his presentation and not the anger he knew the Force user was pricking in him. _He better not be testing me. If he tested me, I don’t know if -_

‘Adults searching for stability are easier to recruit,’ Hux managed to continue. ‘There are many on underdeveloped or decaying planets who would escape by any means necessary. These are often the same areas where we acquire child recruits – children who are unwanted, isolated, or abused; children whom no one would notice are missing.’

‘This much everyone knows,’ Pryde said, his tone bored in contrast to his drilling eyes. ‘I hope your own methods are not remedial enough that you believed I would need assistance retaining this information.’

Hux half-smiled, knowing he was about to gain more traction. ‘As this is where my research in Training and Recruitment intersects with your own Census and Surveying department, I should hope you don’t find it beneath you.’

Pryde’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced at Ren. ‘My-! I was not informed of-!’

‘You would have been once your information was due to be requisitioned,’ Hux said smoothly. ‘Until then, the connection was merely strategic. As I have recently discussed with the Supreme Leader-‘ Hux nodded to Ren, unable to resist reframing their argument in the shuttle as a conference between two equals, ‘- the Order’s recent successes have meant enormous expansion, both geographically and politically. Our recruitment must be increased in proportion with this – but as much of our new acquisitions have been in the vein of hostile occupation, enlistment from their populations is not only low, but risky. General Pryde-‘ Hux wrenched himself out of their spat and back into a more professional tone, ‘would have been of great use in supplying Census data to pinpoint the most suitable new planets for recruitment.’

Pryde smiled pityingly. ‘But, as you say, your training regimens only go so far – you may raise our numbers, but your rate of success will remain the same.’

‘You have already forgotten that we have developed new methods,’ Hux admonished him. He slid a finger across his datapad, and the rotating hologram of the trooper helmet flew open into its component parts; one was highlighted in red against the blue glow. Everyone, even Ren, leaned forward for a better look. _Mitaka did well – his visuals are always suitably compelling._ ‘This is an indoctrination piece. It fits into the ear and emits tones which can be either soothing or stimulating – tones which not only affect human brainwaves and mood, but which also contain messages. It will make troopers – both old and new – less contrary, and it will also train them without the need for more than a modicum of supervision.’

‘Don’t we use something like this with our child recruits already?’ a general farther down the table asked.

Hux inclined his head – not a nod, but an acknowledgement that he would address this in due time. ‘It’s almost exclusive to cloning methods, especially those employed by the Kaminoans for the old Galactic Republic. It’s not used in training adults, especially over short time periods, because the technology is designed to work with the plasticity of young minds. It’s most successful when coupled with the growth acceleration used with most clones, because administrators have access to not only the messages being imprinted and the impressionability of young minds, but the growth of the actual brains themselves. This symbiosis of method is what has limited it to cloning and children – adults’ minds are already formed, and it takes crippling trauma or years of isolation and high-volume messaging to reshape unwilling recruits into suitable soldiers. As for our child recruits, we can’t accelerate their growth, and our current indoctrination methods can be used only sparingly, at vulnerable stages over a longer period of time. With all these methods, the time and resources involved are extremely inefficient. So while the First Order has no _systemic problem_ ,’ he said meaningfully, ‘we saw room for improvement in our indoctrination.’

Pryde, to his credit, was quick. ‘You’re saying you’ve found a way to use this on adults – _unwilling_ adults?’

Hux inclined his head, accepting the credit. ‘Yes.’

‘This has broad applications, Armitage,’ Grand Admiral Sloane, head of Intelligence, said from the end of the table. ‘The spies we could create-‘

‘This project, in its current stage, needs a training period of one year,’ Hux clarified. Then, a little hastily, ‘-- but this still shaves fifteen years off our standard training time – for children, at least – and our scientists are confident they can bring the time down even more.’

‘Still,’ Sloane said, and trailed off. The other generals, catching her thoughtful tone, perked up – _no doubt envisioning the effect on their own departments,_ Hux thought. _Positive or negative. I should commend her for the assist later._

Even Pryde’s eyes were alight with possibility. _And he’s conceiving how this power could be brought under him – both he and Ren think they’ve won now. Let them dream for the moment._ But Pryde, to Hux’s surprise, did not gloat any further. Presumably satisfied in his new department’s glorious potential, he picked up the thread of the meeting.

‘As Grand Admiral Hux mentioned when he was relinquishing control of Training and Recruitment,’ Pryde said, unable to resist a brief stab, ‘the Order’s expansion has been rapid and remarkably successful. So successful, in fact, that the Resistance has been forced to retreat from significant military strikes in favour of –‘ he sneered ‘- _political process_.’

There was a chuckle at this; with Ren’s ascension, impatience with any form of public representation in governing had blossomed into full disgust.

‘So, as you remember from Grand Admiral Sloane’s briefing last week, they have decided to forge alliances the old fashioned way – by sponsoring elections for a _New_ New Republic.’

Another round of general amusement, Hux noted darkly. Humour was such an easy method of communication, but unfortunately one he was not gifted with. _Unless the phrase ‘general amusement’ counts._

‘We have been unable to pinpoint the location of the first Assembly and Chancellor election,’ Sloane admitted reluctantly. ‘Participating systems must have arranged this extremely rapidly, to the point of what must have been snap elections on participating worlds. We’re hoping that these surprise local elections will have depressed turnout, which will mean some people feel less represented – a state of mind which we can more easily turn to our advantage. But, more importantly, it means that, in spite of what we assumed from the Resistance’s isolation during the Battle of Crait, there is still sufficient sympathy for their cause that many systems have mustered such monumental election processes through Resistance pressure alone.’

‘ _What_ Resistance?’ Pryde put in humorously – _a little too obviously desparate not to be left out of Sloane’s monologue,_ Hux throught with a spark of his own amusement. ‘Judging from their supply chains, there are only a few thousand of them left, and they’ve got almost nothing to their name.’

‘Their military force is not the same as their civilian sympathisers,’ Sloane said warningly. ‘Their civilian allies must be important, if not numerically significant, for the Resistance to think political process will help their cause.’

Pryde nodded along. ‘Many of the more prominent systems prefer politics, slow as they are – they’re uneasy about the optics of throwing in with an armed militia with no governmental oversight other than an ex-princess.’

Everyone froze. Hux was the only one who dared look at Ren in that moment. But the enormous black-robed form was motionless. His shoulders were sloped, almost relaxed. His helmet wagged heavily on the end of his thick neck. _Resigned?_ Hux guessed, unfamiliar with the emotion.

‘No doubt planets ruled by aristocracies have a firmer hold on their population,’ the Supreme Leader said, surprising them all with a reasonable contribution. ‘They probably make up the majority of the systems involved. Focus on those.’

Sloane and Pryde nodded. Hux’s thoughts darkened.

‘And what would you have me do?’ he snapped with more emotion than he meant to betray. ‘Now that I have been reassigned?’

Ren’s helmet tilted ever so slightly – and sarcastically. ‘Right now I think your abilities would be best suited to tracking down our deserting troopers.’

_That’s it?_ Hux stared at Ren, eyes burning. ‘Surely that would fall under Intelligence.’

‘It seems to have escaped your attention that Grand Admiral Sloane’s attentions are required elsewhere.’ Ren reached down and slammed a finger into the screen of Hux’s datapad, cutting the hologram off. ‘If it makes you feel better, think of your mission as essential to our larger target; we don’t want them seeking out the Resistance and sharing information, do we?’

_Do not infantilise me in front of the other officers! I am not a weak child to be pushed around anymore!_ Hux, unable to tolerate it anymore, stood. ‘Very well,’ he grated. ‘As that is the extent of my responsibilities, I will excuse myself to begin on them immediately.’

‘Do that,’ the Supreme Leader said, leaning into his Grand Admiral’s space and forcing him to take a step backwards.

After an internal struggle – _am I retreating? Do I have a choice at this point?_ – Hux turned and strode away. He could feel the Generals’ gazes on him, and, as he passed Grand Admiral Sloane, their eyes met briefly. Her eyebrows snapped together in a complex expression – disappointment, alarm, inquiry, encouragement – and Hux had to look away.

He paused at the door, hating himself for that brief hesitation, but after a moment he pulled himself together, firmed his shoulders, and exited without looking back. The pneumatic door hissed shut behind him and he exhaled, fear draining from him, leaving only the familiar anger in its place.

_Well, he did me one favour,_ he thought, with a comforting spark of victory, and set off, almost trotting, for the living quarters. A mouse droid swerved to skitter after him, tweeting forlornly for attention; Hux aimed a kick at it, and it hesitated long enough for him to dive into a lift. He could hear it burbling unhappily as he descended.

* * *

Supreme Leader Ren’s rooms on the Finaliser were the same as those he had used when Snoke was still alive. Hux suspected this was because they had been specially refined to his tastes in some way, perhaps to the point of installing certain preventative systems to stop trespassers or communications surveillance. _Then again, maybe not,_ he thought smugly, activating a programme of his own design on his datapad and watching the door open for him as though he belonged there.

The décor always irritated him; it was so calculated to set off its owner. In contrast to Ren’s universal uniform of black, the inside of his suite was a surgical white, the surfaces slick plastisteel sliced through with inset vertical light slots, recessed doors for storage, and the necessary atmosphere filtration systems, these last exposed for added industrial severity. Small alcoves, each hardly large enough to hold a blaster, ran around the perimeter at waist height, and, as he always did, Hux drifted towards them in fascination. He had examined them many times, but given that his opportunities in Ren’s rooms were always limited, he’d never had sufficient time to truly understand their purpose.

Some niches were empty, waiting hungrily, but most held an artefact, each clearly ancient -- the metal pitted, the surface dull, and all showing a line of the same text on them. Some were weapons – matched fighting daggers, a sword, a defense baton – and some appeared to be ancient versions of datacrons. The technology for reading them was doubtless long gone. Hux ran a finger down the edge of one, the scratches – text? – in its side refusing to reveal itself to him. _They don’t all match in style – they’re not some sort of a set he’s completing. But the text is all the same. Artefacts of a lost civiliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was merely sentiment for him, but sentiment for what? He’s the Supreme Leader of the First Order; he has millions of the most highly-trained troops in the galaxy at his command. What more could he want?_

Hux turned, his eyes searching the room, but, to his surprise, there didn’t seem to be anything new. He’d taken to visiting Ren’s room after each of the Supreme Leader’s mysterious missions, and each time Ren had returned with some new artefact. But this time, he appeared to have failed.

_That would explain his ill temper,_ Hux reasoned. _But there must have been something there – it was Vader’s private fortress! Surely the culmination of his search! Was it locked away from him? Did he lose it somehow?_

Then his mind fitted it together, and he almost laughed out loud. _No wonder he was so set on my tracking down those petty troopers! They not only marooned him, they_ stole his artefact! _Well. In spite of Ren’s best efforts to humiliate me, it would seem he’s made it easier for me instead._

He checked his timepiece, and, with a last sharp look around, left. He strode quickly through the dormitory halls to the canteen – which he judged a safe distance from Ren’s rooms –took a cup of tarine tea, and made for his office.

Hux’s working space was not large – on a naval ship, even a destroyer the size of the Finalizer, few rooms were – but it was fastidiously arranged to give the impression of ability and authority in spite of its snugness. Recessed can lights, each directed to a work surface; a flat desk with cutting-edge holo-displays; his own powerful servers, siloed from the rest of the Order to protect his high-security documents and research; a tilted desk for drafting blueprints, to farm out his engineering projects for prototyping and testing; a locked storage cabinet spanning an entire wall, holding everything from spare uniforms and stationary to the handful of illicit sidearms and other spycraft devices he’d picked up on leave.

He checked his private toilet closet and quickly swept for bugs -- habits born of a lifetime of paranoia, amplified into relevance again by a year under Kylo Ren’s Supreme Leadership – and finally sat before his drafting table. His tea steamed forgotten on his desk.

Hux brought up the old holo diagrams for the indoctrination piece he’d done almost two years ago and stared at them. _It’s too late to sabotage them, now that they’ve already been prototyped and tested,_ he thought, casting about for solutions. _Especially as that would only slander my own abilities. And I’m no longer in Recruitment and Training_ at all, _which means I can’t bias the candidate pools to ensure they’re full of recruits who wouldn’t take well to it. No – stop it!_ He bent his head sharply, as if slinging out the train of thought. _Regaining control of any future indoctrination-pieced troops is not the priority right now. The current problem is the loss of my recruiters; whether Ren knows it or not, he just cut off my network of spies and informants. It could save me a lot of trouble down the line, but right now –_ _Well. I know_ one _piece I can salvage._ _I’m close enough now that one may be all I need._

Hux drew out his private datapad and leant it against his drafting table. He gave it his fingerprints and a huff of his breath, and the pad measured his bodily functions against his usual chemical makeup before granting him access.

His Hand – his personal private spy and assassin, the only one he trusted with his most secret missions – sprang into view. She was on her tiny stealth transport, and it seemed he’d caught her changing between missions, swapping her anonymous, red-lined stormtrooper officer’s armour into equally anonymous, earth-toned civilian clothes. Her helmet was hung carefully behind her, but her gauntlets were thrown on the rear console.

‘Grand Admiral,’ she said, guessing why he’d called. ‘Your local contact is dead. But I personally ensured that the datacron was successfully delivered. FN-2187 is doubtless following it to the location now.’

Hux permitted his eyes to slit in pleasure. ‘What are the chances he figures out all the datacron’s ‘recruitment listings’ are from the same planet?’

His Hand shrugged. ‘Your local contact informed me that his partner – the leader of their little operation - was reluctant to agree to terms. FN-2187 will probably try to use it on his own rather than hand it over to her analysts.’

‘Of course she’d be reluctant,’ Hux muttered, sparing a moment of bile for the woman who’d nearly bitten his finger off. _Given the chance, she’d rather fight the entire First Order alone rather than take the smallest help from us. If it weren’t for FN-2187’s softness, she’d be impossible to get to. I wonder if she knows how much of a weakness he is?_ He came back to himself. ‘Well, if he doesn’t walk into our net, I have other avenues of approach. Did you put a tracker on their ship?’

‘Yes. But it wasn’t a Resistance ship; they may switch transports.’

‘If they don’t, though, you’ll be able to pick them up again when you arrive in their destination system.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then you can spare a day or so for them to get a head start. In the meantime, I want you to trace a group of deserters.’

His Hand’s thin lip curled, a lone, angry ridge in her broad, flat, white face. He’d known that would get her attention; she hated deserters. _Her sole flaw as an operative; she takes betrayal and rebuke of her methods personally. She should know by now they’re merely fuel for the fire._ ‘Yes.’

Hux drew his hand across his pad, sending the information on Ren’s last trip to her. After a moment of thought, he isolated the string of mysterious text he’d copied from the artefacts in the Supreme Leader’s rooms and sent that as well.

‘They were last seen in the Mustafar system a few hours ago. They’re on a First Order ship, for the time being, so you have a good chance of catching up with them before long.’

‘I see.’ She was scanning the data, her small, pale marble eyes cold. ‘Yes. I can catch them.’

‘Kill them,’ Hux said. ‘Except for the Scout, as you know. And if they have anything with them – anything unusual, anything that looks like this – send it to me.’

Phasma, Hand of the Grand Admiral, split her jaw with a smile. ‘Yes. Sir.’

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lieutenant "Loose Cannon" Connix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013975) by [SentinelSaber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SentinelSaber/pseuds/SentinelSaber)
  * [The Prodigal Stormtrooper](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320387) by [SentinelSaber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SentinelSaber/pseuds/SentinelSaber)




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